


As You Like It

by ChocolatteKitty_Kat



Series: The World Theatre of Santa Fe [1]
Category: Newsies - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Theatre, Fluff, Found Family, Friendship, Light Angst, Theatre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:00:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 32,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26701810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocolatteKitty_Kat/pseuds/ChocolatteKitty_Kat
Summary: Modern/Theatre!AU. Jack Kelly and Crutchie Morris finally make it to Santa Fe, where they find employment at the World Theatre. There they meet a diverse cast of characters who rapidly become friends and family, making Santa Fe into the home they've always longed for.
Series: The World Theatre of Santa Fe [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2075787
Comments: 8
Kudos: 5





	1. All the World's a Stage...

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Hey, y'all! So, I'mma say it now: 75% of the reason I wrote this story was for catharsis. It's absolutely based off of my current job in a theatre, as well as past jobs in other theatres, and I miss my job SO MUCH as we've been laid off for 6 months now thanks to COVID, and won't be back before January at the earliest. I miss my job and all the people I work with, so I decided to write a story about it, and projected it onto my current obsession: Newsies. Is Elaine a self-insert? Pretty much. Are the characters of most of the boys more based on the guys I work with than their actual depictions in media? Generally. But this was a lot of fun to write, and made me feel better about life. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

“The World Theatre,” Jack murmured, squinting up at the metal sign shaped into the words, mounted over the door of the auspicious building. The World looked significantly newer than many of the other buildings they had passed on the drive in, but had also clearly been built in some kind of older or more traditional style than most of the other new buildings they had seen in the city.

“We finally made it.”

Jack glanced over at his passenger. His best friend and honorary little brother, Crutchie, was leaning forward as far as he could, straining against his seatbelt to take in as much of the huge building as possible. He didn’t spare a glance to Jack, focused entirely on the view in front of them. Jack smiled to himself and turned off the engine. “We sure did.”

“Come on, Jack,” Crutchie laughed. He leaned back far enough to unfasten his seatbelt and reached for his crutch and the door at the same time. “How long have you been wanting to move to Santa Fe for? And now that we’re here, I’d swear you want to go back to New York already.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I miss the pollution. Don’t go anywhere.” Jack grumbled as he undid his own seatbelt and clambered out of the van. The old-as-heck fifteen passenger had only cost him a few hundred dollars—to purchase. Repairs since then had totaled in the thousands, and Jack truly regretted not just spending more up front for a vehicle in better shape. Despite all odds, however, the piece of garbage had carried them both all the way across the country, and even loaned her converted back section—the first thing Jack had done was rip out all but one row of seats—as a temporary living space for the journey. The outside of the van had at some point somewhat recently been white, probably, but was now mottled with so many colors, between coats of paint, scrapes and scratches, and even a few rust patches and strips of duct tape—not to mention dried mud and more—, that Crutchie jokingly called its color “abstract art”. Somehow, this all seemed appropriate, though. Jack made his way around the van to open Crutchie’s door, and offered his arm up to his friend.

“Jack, I don’t need help,” Crutchie rolled his eyes. He slipped his right arm into his crutch and braced the other on the door before sliding off the seat to land on his left foot on the asphalt.

“Yeah, tell that to your arm and knees,” Jack eyed a nasty scrape along Crutchie’s forearm. “I don’t want you falling again. I don’t need that kind of stress in my life.”

Crutchie laughed and gave him a playful shove. “I fell one time. How many dozens of times have I gotten in and out of this car? And I fell once. It happens. It would probably happen even without this thing.” He waved his crutch to illustrate his point. “Anyways, the only reason I fell was because it was raining. The door was wet and my hand slipped. But, right now, it’s completely dry, so I’m perfectly safe.”

Jack rolled his eyes and shut the van door. “Sure. I get that. But I still worry.”

“Since when are you my mother?” Crutchie laughed, poking Jack lightly in the side, his eyes crinkling up as he beamed up at his friend. “Come on. We’ll be late.”

Jack rolled his eyes, locked the van door, and followed Crutchie up the low stairs to the door of the World. Inside, the air was cool, a blissful respite from the aggressive heat outside, and Jack paused a moment to take in the theatre lobby. To either side, wide staircases with more low-rise stairs wound up a full flight to small side balconies, then continued up another whole flight to a wide balcony that spanned almost the width of the room. In front of them was a long counter with a handful of people behind it, all in smart uniforms of white button-down shirts, blue ties that matched the theatre’s logo perfectly, and black vests.

“Good morning!” one of the uniformed clerks called. “Can I help you?”

“Hi,” Jack jogged up to the counter. “I’m Jack Kelly. That’s Charlie Morris. We’re supposed to start work here today. Uh, we’re supposed to see Hannah Martin?”

“You can have a seat over there, and I’ll call Hannah and let her know you’re here,” the clerk smiled cheerfully, pointing at an uncomfortable-looking couch by a wall to the left, underneath a sign with an arrow indicating the direction of a women’s restroom.

As Jack and Crutchie took their seats on the couch—which proved to be even more uncomfortable than it looked—the clerk picked up a phone and spoke quietly into the receiver. The lobby was quiet overall; the only sounds were the soft voices of the three clerks speaking into their headsets, clacking of keyboards as they typed, and the almost imperceptible whir of the air conditioning system far overhead, ever present behind the sounds of the clerks.

After a few moments of awkward silence on Jack and Crutchie’s part, a woman appeared at the top of the stairwell across the lobby from them. She made it halfway down before spotting them, then waved and smiled. “Jack and Charles? You can come on up.”

They stood up and headed for the base of the stairs, but a  _ psst _ from one of the clerks caught their attention. “There’s an elevator under those stairs, if that’s easier.” He pointed to a small sign under the stairs the woman—presumably Hannah—was standing on.

“Nah, we’re fine,” Jack smiled.

“But thanks!” Crutchie called over his shoulder, already well on his way to the stairs, which he navigated easily, hopping up on his good foot, while Jack trailed along behind, constantly worried that Crutchie would land wrong and fall back down the stairs. Not that that had ever happened, of course, but Jack still worried. Hannah led them up the second flight, and through an unassuming door—labeled ‘offices’— off to the right, next to a small set of elevator doors. Inside, they smiled politely as they passed a middle-aged woman seated behind an impressive, L-shaped wooden desk. Hannah led them around a few small cubicles, constructed by low temporary walls, to a pair of folding tables surrounded by folding chairs.

“Sorry, the conference room is in use today, so we’ll have to use these,” Hannah chuckled a little too loud as she took a seat, gesturing for the boys to do the same. “Alright. I just have some final paperwork for you to sign, mostly about benefits and such.”

For the next few hours, Hannah walked them through quite a few different documents, mostly, as she had said, about insurance and benefits. She explained each document thoroughly before handing it to them, and answered any questions that they had before moving on to the next item. She split the completed papers into two stacks, which grew steadily as they went through each item. “Okay, I think that’s it!” she said finally, offering a bright smile. “These are for you”—she handed them each a blue-green folder—“Inside I have copies of our employee handbook and all of the documents you’ve just signed, for your records. Do you have any more questions?”

Both Jack and Crutchie shook their heads.

“Excellent!” Hannah smiled. “I’ll call backstage and have someone come up to walk you back. Or, actually…” She trailed off as a door, somewhere on the other side of the cubicles and unseen from where they were sitting, opened and a pair of loudly-chattering voices burst into the still quiet of the room. “Elaine?”

The voices quieted for a moment.

“Yeah?” a voice responded hesitantly.

“Can you come over here for a moment, please? We’re at the break tables.”

There were a few murmurs, one sounding suspiciously like  _ good luck _ , before another door opened and closed, right around the same time a face popped around the cubicle corner that blocked the break tables off from the rest of the room. “Hi, Hannah,” the young woman to whom the face belonged chirped brightly, stepping fully out from behind the wall. She was small, with long, dark hair, and oversized green glasses.

“Hi, Elaine,” Hannah smiled warmly. “These are our two new hires for the crew. Would you mind taking them backstage with you?”

“Sure,” Elaine smiled. She waited as the boys stood up and headed towards her, then led them out of the offices. “Hi, I’m Elaine,” she turned to offer them a bright smile over her shoulder.

“I’m Jack Kelly, and this is Charlie Morris,” Jack replied, leaning around Crutchie to shake Elaine’s hand when she offered it.

“Wow, New York,” Elaine laughed. “Sorry, that probably came out wrong. I grew up in Boston and PA. It’s been a while since I heard a full-bodied New York accent on anyone around here. Well, besides Spot.”

“Spot?” Jack arched an eyebrow.

“Our house manager,” Elaine explained. “You’ll meet him sooner or later. Oh, do you want to take the elevator?”

“Stairs are fine,” Crutchie shook his head, already starting to hop down them. Jack hurried after him, even though he knew that his friend had an even easier time going down stairs than up them. Elaine bounced along behind them, her curly hair bobbing with each little hop down the steps.

“So, if you’re from the east coast, how did you get all the way out here to New Mexico?” Jack asked as they made their way down the double flights of stairs.

“I could ask you the same question,” Elaine teased. “My brothers are performers, and I used to be too. We moved around a lot for a few years, but decided to stick around Santa Fe, at least for a little while. We like it here.” She shrugged. “Your turn.”

“Jack’s always wanted to come to Santa Fe,” Crutchie said over his shoulder, hopping off the last step. “Never said why, though.”

“Yeah, well, I just kind of picked the furthest place I could think of at one point when I was a kid and promised myself that someday I’d get there,” Jack squirmed uncomfortably at the attention, and Elaine’s piercing gaze.

“Fair enough,” she shrugged. “Hey, Tommy, hey, Dutch!” she waved and grinned at two of the clerks behind the front desk. They waved back, and the one who had greeted Jack and Crutchie earlier offered them a second wave. Elaine led them through the spacious lobby, past a gift shop, located behind the front desk, and a concession stand, tucked into the wall by the theatre doors. She threw the double doors open dramatically, and the boys followed her into a small, unlit anteroom. The doors were about halfway closed when she flung open a second set of doors.

These doors opened into a wide room, full of arched rows of padded seats, with gently-sloped aisles leading down to a four-foot-high stage. “Welcome to the World Theatre of Santa Fe,” Elaine grinned, stretching out her arms and spinning as if to show off the huge room. “Seats about sixteen hundred; the booth for the sound and light ops is back there”—she pointed—“and, if you follow me, I’ll show you backstage.”

They trailed along behind Elaine as she made for the stage, then went up five steps built into the side of the stage, next to the wall. They walked through the side stage area, past a rail with several pegs with ropes tied to them. After that, they passed through a door, where they saw a small alcove with several washer and dryers set up in it—along with:

“What is that smell?” Jack nearly gagged.

“Oh, sorry, I forgot to warn you,” Elaine said breathlessly, already on the other side of the machines. “Something in the system backs up and, uh… yeah. That. Trust me, it’s worse when you’re the one standing there for the whole show.”

She led them up another long stairwell—Jack would have guessed it was a triple flight, if he wasn’t so winded by the top—and into a long hallway. “It’s technically lunchtime for crew, but I think I should take you to see Weisel first. I’m sure he’ll have something to say to you…” she trailed off, glancing down the hallway, then grabbed Crutchie by the arm and pulled him into a small, dark room off to the right, beckoning Jack to follow. “Just as a… heads up: Weisel’s a jerk. Like, obviously there’s at least one of those everywhere you go, but Weisel is his own special breed. He sucks, but he’s good at faking nice, so people tend not to notice, at least not straight off. Just don’t let him see if he gets to you. And he’ll probably be nice to start off with, anyways.”

She led them back into the hallway. “Okay. So that’s dressing room five. This is Spice’s office—don’t ever go in there unless you’re invited—and that’s the sewing room… men’s bathroom… cutting and receiving rooms for costumes, and Weisel and Medda’s offices.” She pointed out each room as they passed, stopping in front of the one she had named as Weisel’s office. “All that’s down that way is the rest of the dressing rooms. And that hallway leads to the green room and elevator.” She knocked on the door to Weisel’s office, opening it far enough to poke her head in when a response came. “I’ve got two new hires from Hannah, Mr. Weisel,” she said cheerfully. “And I need to clock out for lunch.”

“Oh, come in.”

“Cool. Mr. Weisel, this is Jack and Charlie.”

Elaine opened the door and slipped into an oversized computer chair, her fingers flying across the keys of the computer at the desk as she logged into it. The boys squeezed in behind her: the office was narrow, barely six or seven feet wide. The two “desks” were actually a wide counter built into the wall, two workspaces divided by a fancy copier, each with a desktop tower and monitor. At the back desk sat an older man, with salt-and-pepper hair—more salt than pepper—and a thoroughly displeased, unshaven face. He looked the two boys up and down, his face darkening further as he took in Crutchie; Jack instinctively wanted to step protectively in front of his friend, but couldn’t fit between Elaine’s chair and Crutchie to do so.

“Hannah said she hired two new crew boys for me,” Weisel turned back to his desk and took a bite of a sandwich, chewing slowly as he swiveled back to face the boys. “So, do either of you have any theatre experience?”

“No, not so much,” Jack said. “We just needed jobs because we were moving out here, and this is what was available. But I’ve done plenty of physical labor, and that’s what she said to expect, so I’m sure I’ll be able to sort it out quick enough. And she said something about… a spotlight operator or something for Charlie?”

“Yeah, yeah, the spot op position,” Weisel nodded, turning back to his sandwich. “Not sure what I’m going to do with him for builds.”

“Charlie, have you ever done any sewing?” Elaine piped up from the computer, where she was effectively trapped by Jack and Crutchie squashed behind her. “Wardrobe always needs help, and even if you haven’t, I don’t mind teaching. We never have enough hands to do all the little things, like buttons and hooks and name tags.”

“Alright, you can have him,” Weisel shrugged. “Next cue-to-cue they run, you can take him up to spot and teach him the follow spot.”

“Okay,” Elaine chirped. “Since it’s lunch now, do you want me to take Jack and Charlie downstairs and introduce them to everyone?”

“Sure, whatever,” Weisel waved his hand dismissively. “Jack, you come find me after lunch, and I’ll get you started. Elaine, you can take Charlie.”

The boys squeezed out of the little office and Elaine followed them. “I’ll show you downstairs, but I have to grab my lunch first. Do y’all have food?”

“Ah, no, we were gonna run out and grab something,” Jack said.

“Well, you don’t have much time for that right now,” Elaine said. “There may be a lot of places to eat around here, but it can easily take well over half an hour to get through them, plus driving back and forth, and we have less than forty-five minutes till we have to be back. But don’t worry, there’s some leftovers from the last concert in the fridge in the green room. Just follow me.”

Jack and Crutchie followed Elaine first to the sewing room, then to a large room, painted sage green, which she called the green room. “When we have concert tours in, we set up their catering in here. The upstairs staff usually eats in here on non-concert days, but Sarah—the other dresser—and I prefer to go downstairs and eat with the crew. Better company.” She opened the door to a tall, industrial-looking stainless steel refrigerator. “Here, there’s a bunch of stuff leftover from the concert the other day.” She produced a half-empty deli tray, along with some other food, and set it on one of the two long tables running through the center of the room, and grabbed some bread from a windowsill next to the fridge. “I know sandwiches aren’t much, but, hey, it’s free food. And way easier and faster than going out for lunch.”

The boys made their sandwiches in silence while Elaine microwaved her own lunch—“Quinoa with black beans, Ragu, and a little bit of cheese. It’s like spaghetti, but better!”

“It doesn’t smell better,” Crutchie wrinkled his nose.

“Yeah…” Elaine sighed, looking sadly into the container. “But I guess that’s the trade-off.”

Once they were done with the food, Elaine helped them load it back into the fridge and took them back out into the hallway. “Elevator,” she said as she punched a button on the wall. “It’s four flights to the basement, and I have bad knees. I try and take the stairs at least a few times a day, but my legs won’t let me all the time. Lunch is when I give myself a break.”

The elevator was painfully slow, and creaked alarmingly as they rode it down. “I don’t trust that,” Jack arched an eyebrow and stared up at the roof.

“Well, I’ve only heard of it getting stuck once, if that helps,” Elaine laughed.

When they reached the basement, the doors slid open—groaning as they did—and a wave of stale but cool air that smelled like beef hit them. The basement walls were made of white-painted cinderblocks, while the floor was the same painted grey concrete that the cavernous upstairs room behind the stage—where the washers and dryers were housed—had, although less stained and cracked. Elaine led them around a corner, past chain-link-fenced cubicles stuffed with fake Christmas greenery, and up to a small room created by two half walls, and an L-shaped row of old lockers, many of which were covered back and front with stickers advertising tours that had (presumably) come through the theatre in the past. There were three tables packed with folding chairs, on top of a filthy, old rug. In the back of the “room” were a small, free-standing sink with just enough counter space for a dish-drying rack, an ancient refrigerator with a freezer on top, and a rickety table with a microwave, old drip coffeemaker, and boxes of plastic cutlery and paper plates. On the back wall was a wide half-white, half-cork board; on the whiteboard side was scrawled, in faded green and red dry-erase marker, 

  1. DEFINITIVE LIST OF THE TOP 10 DISNEY ANIMATED MOVIES EVER:
  2. Tangled The Lion King
  3. Aladdin
  4. Great Mouse Detective
  5. Moana
  6. Mulan 
  7. Sword in the Stone
  8. Black Cauldron
  9. Robin Hood (should be #2 but whatever)
  10. Cinderella II
  11. Lion King 1 ½



There were also several notes and arrows drawn on the board, seemingly trying to correct whoever had initially written it, but Jack and Crutchie didn’t have time to take those in—in fact, they barely had time to take in anything else, because as soon as they rounded the corner created by the lockers, they were met by a deafening cheer of “ELAINE!”

Elaine jumped, nearly dropping her container of quinoa-spaghetti, and yelped. “Dear  _ lord _ , boys, don’t scare me like that!”

“Look, we fixed your list!” a voice laughed.

“You didn’t fix it, you made it wrong!” Elaine cried. “The Lion King SUCKS, and is definitely not the best animated Disney movie ever!”

The room immediately dissolved into chaos, each of the dozen occupants yelling over one another, mostly about the movies they felt should be on the list. Elaine set her food down on the nearest table and waved her arms. “Everyone, SHUT UP!”

The room slowly quieted, the shouting replaced largely by laughter.

“Come on, boys, we have to make a good impression on the new guys!” Elaine yelled over the continuing noise. That shut the boys up, and they turned their attention to Elaine. “Thank you!” She grabbed Jack’s arm and pulled him forward. “Everyone, meet Jack Kelly, and that’s Charlie…”

“Morris,” Crutchie stepped forward and waved his crutch, his other hand full with his sandwich plate. “But you can call me Crutchie.”

“Sure,” one of the boys laughed.

“Weasel has officially given Charlie to Buttons and Snipe as their new follow spot op”—

“You mean you’re bailing on us, Elaine!?” One of the boys in the back cried.

“Not by choice, Snipe,” Elaine retorted. “By decree of Weasel. Anyways, we always knew this day would come, especially after Barb and Carla quit. But don’t worry, I promise that I will miss you terribly.”

“Yeah, right,” the boy rolled his eyes. “You’ll forget about us in a week.”

“Five days, max,” Elaine said. “Anyways, Jack is on run crew with the rest of y’all, so be nice to him.”

“We’re always nice,” the boy in front of Elaine leaned his head back and batted his eyelashes.

“Sure you are,” Elaine laughed, rolling her eyes and giving him a playful shove on the shoulder. “Jack, Charlie, meet the crew boys.” She pointed to each person in turn as she introduced them. “Race is our deck chief—which basically means he’s in charge backstage, second only to Weasel—and he runs the fly rail. Albert is regular run crew, like you, Jack. Buttons is our L1, which means that he runs the light board and supervises the spotlight operators, namely you, Charlie, and Snipe over there. Elmer here is our A1, which means that he runs the sound board and heads up audio. Finch is the A2–a.k.a. Elmer’s backup and runs the backstage board—, and Henry is the A3–Finch’s backup. Mike and Ike over there are the twins; they’re run crew, and don’t worry about trying to tell them apart, because they’re always switching places anyways and still answer to the wrong name if you use it. The last two over there are Jo-Jo and Romeo, also run crew. And that’s Sarah! For concerts, she’s the hospitality coordinator, and she works wardrobe and dresses for our original shows.”

“And what do you do?” Crutchie asked as they squeezed into the last open seats at the same table as Elmer, Finch, and Sarah.

“Elaine does everything,” Elmer laughed.

“My title is production assistant,” Elaine said. “That just means that, yes, I do everything. I’m mostly a stitcher and dresser, at least for original shows. For concerts, I run for the tours and back Sarah up on hospitality. I also swing in for spotlight, and I’ve even done run crew a few times, and I’m the only person with experience with wigs so I do that, and I help Weasel out with props. But mostly I swing dressing tracks and spot op.”

“Swingers have the most fun,” Elmer teased.

“Gross,” Elaine rolled her eyes, but smiled despite herself. “Speaking of bad jokes, Finch, you wanna hear one?”

“No,” Finch groaned.

“What does a boat do when it doesn’t feel good?”

Finch glared at her.

“It goes to the dock!”

Sarah covered her mouth to hide a smile, and Elmer snorted into his water bottle.

“Thank you,” Elaine beamed.


	2. Chapter 2

After lunch, Crutchie followed Elaine and Sarah to the elevator and back up to the third floor. “So, Charlie, I never caught your answer,” Elaine said, half preoccupied with trying to fit her Tupperware back into her lunch bag, “do you know how to sew?”

“I’ve been known to put on a button or two in my time,” Crutchie said. “But that’s about it.”

“Hey, that’s a great start!” Elaine said. “It’s better than nothing. I’ll show you how to do hook and eyes when we get up; I know there are a few of those that need done. Later, I’ll show you how to do nametags if there’s a machine free.”

Upstairs, Sarah and Elaine swung by the office to clock back in, then took Crutchie to the sewing room, where they found an older woman with a head of permed white-grey hair hunched over the sewing machine next to the room’s only window. “Hey, Carol,” Elaine said loudly. “Did you have a good lunch?”

“It was fine,” the woman replied. “You know, I swear the drive through around here get slower and slower every day. I sat at Wendy’s for over thirty minutes today!”

“Oh, that sucks,” Elaine said, tucking her lunchbag under one of the desks against the right-hand wall; on the top of the desk was a sewing machine, along with an eclectic collection of knickknacks—a Bug’s Bunny figurine dunking a basketball, a tiny ornament of a theatrical mask wearing an elaborate jester’s hat, a jar of slime, a heart-shaped rainbow slinky, an old Nutella jar full of markers, to name a few—and a pile of jewelry. Sarah sat down at the desk to her left; her desk was clear, especially in comparison to Elaine’s, with only a sewing machine, pincushion made of a crocheted octopus, and a chunk of purple plastic with a shallow depression on the top, full of more pins. Elaine gestured for Crutchie to take a seat at the third desk, to her right. This desk—actually a heavy plastic table—had no sewing machine, but had a collection of various sewing-themed odds and ends. “Hey, Carol,” Elaine called, “this is Charlie. He’s new here. Mr. Weisel has assigned him to wardrobe for the build.”

The older woman turned and squinted at Crutchie. “Does he know how to sew?”

“He can do some hand-sewing,” Elaine replied. “I figured he’d be good for buttons and hooks, and stuff like that, especially on days where we don’t have any of the other ladies in.”

Carol nodded and turned back to her work. Moments later, her machine started whirring, and Elaine turned back to Crutchie.

“Don’t pay much attention to her,” she said softly. “Carol spends most of her time in her own world. If you have any questions about anything come to me first; Carol will refuse to show you how to do anything.” She lowered her voice even further. “She’s nearly sixty-five and keeps talking about retiring, but I think she feels threatened by us kids, and she tends to take it out on us. Even though you’re spot, she probably won’t be nice to you. The only people she’s really nice to are the performers, but even them she’ll talk shit about behind their backs.”

The machine stopped, and Elaine straightened up. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll show you our system.” She took Crutchie down the hall, which was jam-packed with racks stuffed with clothing, and explained the convoluted system the World implemented. As they went, she pulled a few garments off of the racks and carried them back to the sewing room when they were done.

“Okay, so just check the tag to see what each piece needs; these are all buttons or hook-and-eyes. Oh, it looks like this one needs the cuff hems fixed; I’ll show you how to do that too. Just take your time, ask any questions you need to, and when you get to one that needs a hook-and-eye, let me know, and I’ll show you how to do it.

.*.*.*.*.*.

After lunch, Jack followed the rest of the boys up to the big warehouse-esque room behind the stage. “Welcome to the wagon house,” Albert grinned over his shoulder at Jack. “Most of the construction for the sets is done over at our warehouse, but we put it all together and do the finishing touches here. And once build really starts—which it has for this show—everything pretty much moves here. The shop crew is still over at the warehouse right now, but in the next week or two, they’ll be here with us. And when we have a show running and a concert tour comes through, we break the set down and store it as out of the way as we can in the wagon house. Everything is designed to be movable and come apart into smaller pieces now; they didn’t used to do that and, lemme tell ya, movin’ it all was a pain in the ass.”

“Do you have any experience in construction, Jack?” Elmer asked as the other boys scattered off to various points around the wagon house, resuming whatever tasks they had been set to before lunch. “Or have you ever painted a set before? Even house painting or anything like that is good experience to have, although there’s a little more to scenic painting than that.”

“I’ve done some construction before,” Jack said. “I did a few weeks as a temp at a job site back in the city. And I’ve done… some painting. Different sorts.”

“That’s great, because most of us have about the same artistic sense of a rock,” Elmer laughed. “I think Snipe could use some help painting; why don’t you go ahead and stick with him for now?”

Jack made his way over to Snipe, who was painting a large wooden wagon on the far side of the wagon house. “Hey, Snipe; Elmer said I should come see if you need help, since I’ve done some painting before.”

“Great!” Snipe replied. He took some time to show Jack what he was doing, artificially aging the wood with a series of dark brown paint washes, then going over it all to highlight and artificially create the grain of the wood with a dry brush dipped in thick, dark brown paint. He even showed Jack how to create false knots in the milled wood to make it look even more real.

“Hey, you’re not half bad!” Snipe said, looking impressed as he checked over Jack’s work. “Why don’t you finish this, and I’ll start on that other wagon over there.”

“Hey, Snipe! Spice wants to run a scene with lights; head up to the catwalk!” Weisel called from the other side of the wagon house.

“Never mind,” Snipe sighed. “Look, if you finish that wagon before I get back, you can go ahead and start on the next one.”

.*.*.*.*.*.

“Elaine, Spice wants to run with lights. Head up to the catwalk.”

Crutchie jumped as the voice blared out of the intercom speaker—which he hadn’t even noticed before—on the wall directly at his back. Elaine sighed and kicked herself back, rolling across the floor to the intercom without getting out of her chair. “We’ll be up in a few minutes, thanks!” She said into the intercom, then rolled back to her desk. “Come on, Charlie. You’re up! It’s time to hike up to the catwalk.”

The walk to the catwalk was a long one. They went all the way down the triple flight of stairs to the wagon house—where Elaine waved at the other boys and exchanged quips with Finch and Elmer—and back across the stage, through the auditorium, up the double flight of stairs in the lobby, and back into the office where Hannah had met with Jack and Charlie that morning. Elaine took him to the back of the office and through another door, which led to an extremely steep flight of stairs. At the top of these was a low door—no more than four feet high—above three metal steps, next to a set of small lockers. Here, Elaine paused for a moment to place her phone on top of the lockers, pointing to a sign on the low door. “Anything loose in your pockets has to stay here. Um… are you able to walk without your crutch?”

“Not really,” Crutchie said. 

“That’s fine. It’s just technically a loose object, and therefore a safety-slash-falling hazard. It’s not as big of a deal when you’re not actually running a spot; I’ll make you something to secure it for when you are.”

They passed through the little door, which stepped down onto a slightly shaky metal catwalk. Elaine kept at least one hand on the railings on either side as they walked, pausing to point out beams that interrupted the metal grate flooring as they went. Crutchie found himself clutching the railing with his free hand, especially when he realized how high up they were; over the balcony, it was only a drop of about ten feet, at the most, but once they passed over that, it was easily a thirty or forty foot drop down to the sloping floor and arced seats of the theatre. The catwalk they stepped onto ran parallel to the wall, but halfway along its length, they turned to their left, onto another catwalk that ran across the width of the theatre. After a few steps, they came to a platform, about eight feet long and five wide, where Snipe was perched on a high chair, next to a small podium with a bright light on top of it, and a massive spotlight, which was whirring softly and radiating a notable amount of heat. Snipe was wearing a bulky headset with a microphone in front of his mouth, along with a neon orange harness around his legs and torso.

When she passed Snipe, Elaine reached out and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Oh, there you are,” he turned around to face them. “Spice keeps asking why we haven’t been able to start yet.”

“Remind her for me what a hike it is to get up here if you can’t take the ladder,” Elaine grumbled. “Hey, do you know if there’s an extra headset anywhere up here for Charlie to use?”

“Uh, yeah, there should be one on the floor over there from when you were learning my track last show. I don’t think anyone’s needed it since then.”

Elaine slipped past Crutchie and poked around on the dark floor of the catwalk, finally popping up and producing a small box with another of the bulky headsets attached to it. “I don’t know how to disconnect this,” she said, handing the box to Snipe, who detached a thick wire from it and handed it back.

“The cable goes there,” he pointed.

“Okay,” she nodded, heading further down the catwalk. “Tell Wease I’ll be on in a minute or two! Oh, hey, duck,” she warned Crutchie just in time to keep him from smacking his forehead on an air duct that ran over the catwalk.

Twenty feet down the catwalk, and just past a second air duct, they came to another platform, this one dark, and piled with cables. Elaine clicked on a light over another small podium, then pressed a button on the side of the spotlight, which sent it whirring to life. “You can sit over there,” she pointed to a folding chair. She showed him how to put on the harness slung over the back of the tall chair next to the light—“You don’t have to wear one of these unless you’re running the spot, because part of the railing in front of them is removed so they can move more freely.”—and opened a chain strung across the front of the light. She hooked up the spare headset and handed it to him after pointing out the buttons to control volume and to allow him to talk, then put on her own headset. “Spot one ready.”

Crutchie put on his headset just in time to hear Weisel say “it’s about time”.

“Okay, this is how to run the spot,” Elaine said, waving Crutchie over. “This lever controls the trombone—that is, the shutter around the light that makes it more or less concentrated.” She shone the light on a spot on the wall to the side of the stage and demonstrated what that meant. She also showed him what two other levers did, while a red-haired woman flitted around the stage, directing the performers there. “Also, notice that Spice was in such a hurry to have us up here, yet still isn’t ready to run the number.”

Crutchie laughed. “I’m guessing Spice is”—

“Make sure your mic is off,” Elaine said. “Spice and Weisel have their own headsets, and Spice is on a different frequency, but Weisel can hear everything we say.”

Crutchie checked the little box. “This is off, right?”

“Yeah, I just wanted to make sure,” Elaine laughed sheepishly. “One of the reasons the last spot op got fired was because he made some less-than-kind remarks about Spice and called Weisel ‘Weasel’ where he could hear. There was more, but that certainly didn’t ingratiate him with the higher-ups. Spots and the L1–Buttons—are on a different frequency from everyone but Weisel, so we can pretty much talk about whatever we want, but make sure you’re not saying anything… bad. Not that I expect you to, I just feel the need to give the warning.”

“Thanks for the heads up,” Crutchie laughed.

“But yeah, Spice is the ginger running around the stage like a maniac right now,” Elaine said. “She’s the theatre’s Creative Director. Normally, that would just mean that she picks the shows and maybe the designers, and might organize the staff some, especially designers or anyone  _ just _ working on the show. But the World is far to autocratic for that. Spice directs every show that the World puts on, writes the original shows, does most of the choreography, writes at least some of the arrangements, and does the costume and scenic designs. We don’t usually have much of a sound design, so she leaves that to Elmer. Apparently, a while ago, she used to let the L1 do the lighting designs, and then she took over and started doing that herself, too, but for the past few shows she’s hired out to a third-party company. Which is stupid, because Buttons actually has a degree in theatrical lighting, and the last L1 had a related degree too. I’m fairly certain it’s mostly because Spice, just like Weisel and most of the higher-ups, thinks most, if not all, of the crew is a bunch of worthless idiots, but who knows. She’s definitely a control freak.”

“Noted,” Crutchie said.

“Sorry, I know I talk a lot. Feel free to tell me to shut up!”

“No, it’s okay!” Crutchie said. “I actually kind of like hearing all of this. It’s helping me figure out how things work around here. What show are we doing right now?”

“Seriously? Did no-one tell y’all that when they were hiring you?” Elaine leaned around the spot to stare slack-jawed at Crutchie. “Ridiculous. We’re doing  _ Les Miserables _ right now. We usually do a musical or straight play each in the spring and fall, and over the summer we’ll run one of Spice’s original shows, which will be some sort of musical review with a certain theme. The one we just did was called  _ Ovation _ and it was to highlight the in-house band. Naturally, they had to replace half of the band going into it, but it was still great. I loved working it, at least. The spring and fall productions run about five weeks, with eight shows a week—one each Tuesday through Thursday, two each on Friday and Saturday, and a Sunday matinee—but the summer production does four shows a week—Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday morning and afternoon, and Thursday afternoon—and runs from the last week of March until the middle of August. We run concerts this whole time, too, from January to the last week of September. October, we stop everything else and go into a full-time build for the Christmas show, which is another Spice original, but definitely our biggest seller. Full houses through most of November, up until Christmas. The Christmas show runs from November first through December thirty-first, nine shows a week until Thanksgiving, and eleven a week until the end of the run.”

“Eleven shows a week?” Crutchie gaped.

“Yep,” Elaine sighed. “Two each Tuesday through Friday, three Saturday, one Sunday.” She paused. “That’s twelve. Twelve shows a week. Dear lord, how do any of us survive…”

“That’s insane,” Crutchie said.

“Yeah, definitely,” Elaine agreed heartily. “But, I’m serious about how packed the house gets. We sell out performances even before Thanksgiving, but after that is when things really kick off. You can’t expect to sleep at all for those two months, but the over time is so, so worth it, if you ask me. And there’s overtime for the spring and fall shows, too, but not nearly as much. Those are sixty-hour weeks, easy, but it’s not unheard of to hit eighty for Christmas.”

“Damn,” Crutchie whistled. “I guess you really don’t get much sleep, pulling eight-hour weeks for two months.”

Elaine laughed. “It’s not the end of the world, but also not everyone’s cut out for it. We have a pretty high turnover rate for crew especially, and especially right before and after Christmas. Sometimes even during.”

“What happens if someone quits during the run of a show?” Crutchie asked.

“If there’s someone free on crew to take their place, Weisel will assign them to it, and sometimes he covers himself. But if there’s no-one free and he’s already covering a track, he has to overhire the position. There’s a company on the other side of the city that we use for that; that’s where we get all of our extra load-in and load-out crew for concerts, too.”

“So, do a lot of the cast come back for more than one show?” Crutchie asked.

“Yeah, we have a few regulars, but there’s usually a few new people for each show. For the spring and fall shows especially, since they have much bigger casts, but we also pull a lot of college students for those shows, especially from the local schools with large theatre departments, because a lot of kids there won’t get a chance to actually be in their productions, just because of size. Plus they get paid. Hardly anything, but at least it’s something. A few professors actually offer class credit for being in our shows.” Elaine pointed at the actor Spice was currently talking to on stage, a athletically-built boy with a shock of dark curly hair. “That’s my brother Alan; he’s playing Marius. He’s been performing here pretty regularly since we moved to Santa Fe and I got my job here.” She pointed at another dark-haired boy, this one taller and thinner, going back and forth with another boy, even taller and with lighter and straighter hair, as they seemed to be trying to out-jump one another. “That’s my younger brother, Alden. Alan does most of the singing between the two of them, and Alden does more dancing, but he can sing too, and Alan can dance, he just doesn’t like to. The one with Alden is my boyfriend, Will. They’ve done almost as many performances here as Alan, although he’s a little more of a regular around here.”

“Your brothers’ names are Alan and Alden?” Crutchie chuckled.

“Yep,” Elaine laughed. “Our mom was really into phonetically similar names. She almost named me Alanna, but decided it was too close to Alan, since we were twins.”

“Oh, really?” Crutchie said. “I probably would’ve guessed that they were the twins, not you and Alan.”

“Yeah, most people guess that since the boys look so much alike,” Elaine said. “Not all twins are identical, though.”

Eventually, they actually ran the scene that Spice had called them up for. It was performed several times, the first at speed, and then a few more with the performers only walking their blocking to adjust it to the stage. Finally, they were released to return to the sewing room.

“I don’t know why Spice keeps making us do spots like this,” Elaine grumbled as she turned off her light and headset, returned the chain to its locked positions, and untangled herself from the harness. “We’ve never done it before, and it’s taking away time that we need for the build. Wardrobe doesn’t really build a ton of costumes, admittedly, but repairs and alterations take a lot of time too!”

Snipe joined them for the trek back to the wagon house, where they stopped briefly to talk to Jack.

“Wow, Jack, this looks great!” Snipe exclaimed, looking over a painted wooden wagon, near the entrance, along with another that Jack was currently working on.

“Thanks,” Jack said, wiping his forehead with the back of his wrist and leaving a streak of dark paint behind.

“I’m gonna have to be careful,” Snipe teased, “or you’ll take my place as the main scenic painter on the crew. Well, after Vince, but he mostly works at the warehouse anyways. Elaine, doesn’t this look great?”

“They look amazing, Jack,” Elaine said. “Did you go to art school or something?”

“Jack’s always been a great artist,” Crutchie said, beaming like a proud parent. “You should see some of his old drawings. He’s been amazing as long as I’ve known him, and I’ve known him for, like, ten years. More, actually.”

“Okay, okay, enough,” Jack grumbled. “The way youse is goin’ on you’d think I was painting the Mona Lisa or something. It’s just fake wood.”

“Well, making fake wood look real takes talent, and I’d definitely say you’ve got some,” Elaine smiled.

“It really does look great,” Crutchie said.

“Come on, we should get back upstairs,” Elaine said, heading for the nearest stairwell. “See ya later, Jack, Snipe.”

“See ya!” Crutchie called, following after her.

.*.*.*.*.*.

“You really think it looks as good as all that?” Jack asked, standing up and taking a few steps back to survey his work.

“It looks great,” Snipe assured him.

“Hey, Snipe!”

That was a new voice. Admittedly, he didn’t really know any of the voices of the crew, having just met them all once, but Jack was certain that he hadn’t heard this voice before. He looked up and saw the voice’s owner, approaching from the other side of the wagon house: a tall boy, probably about his age, with slightly wavy black hair and a prominent nose. Jack swallowed thickly and turned back to the wagon he was working on, burying himself in paint fumes.

“Heya, Davey!” Snipe said, grinning, offering the new arrival a fist bump. “You here to pick up Les and Sarah?”

“Yeah, mostly Les, but rehearsal isn’t done for another hour and a half. I was going to hang out upstairs with Katherine and do homework, she just went to say hi to her dad first.”

“Oh, hey! Davey, this is Jack. He just got started today. Check it out—don’t these wagons look great? Jack painted them. He’s amazing.”

“Wow, these do look awesome,” Davey said, looking over the two wagons.

“Hi,” Jack said, hoping the crack in his voice wasn’t as loud as his brain told him it was. He stood up and offered his hand to Davey—“Oh, sorry,” he said, wiping his paint-smeared palm on the leg of his pants and immediately regretting it, seeing as  _ these were his best pants _ and he had so far managed to avoid getting anything on them in his two hours of painting.

“You got a little something there, too,” Davey said hesitantly, pointing vaguely at his own forehead.

“I—what?” Jack stammered.

“Here,” Snipe materialized beside him with a damp rag. 

Jack turned around and furiously scrubbed at his forehead, hoping that he got all of the paint off before turning back around. Davey had been joined by a pretty young woman with long, curled brown hair. “Oh, hi. I’m Jack Kelly.”

“Hi, I’m Katherine Plummer,” the girl smiled sweetly, shaking his hand.

”David Jacobs,” Davey grinned at Jack. “And yeah, you got it all.”

”Thanks, Jack smiled weakly.

“Katherine’s dad is the World’s primary owner,” Snipe piped up.

“Oh, wow,” said Jack. “That’s… really cool.”

”It’s not a big deal,” Katherine shrugged. “It mostly just means that I can spend as much time as I want here without anyone complaining about it.”

“And, uh… What brings you here?” Jack asked Davey.

”My little brother Les is one of the boys cast as Gavroche in the show,” Davey said. “I usually pick him up. And Katherine and I go to school together, so I hang out here to do homework with her a lot. Also, my sister Sarah works here, so I pick her up sometimes too.”

”Oh, school?” Jack asked.

“Yeah, she’s in grad school for creative writing, and I’m working on a master’s in journalism. We have a few of the same writing classes.”

”That’s… really cool. Yep.”

”Maybe we should find something to entertain ourselves with while these two chat,” Snipe whispered, sidling up beside Katherine.

“Oh, this is entertaining. So far.” Katherine chuckled. “But yeah, I think they might like their privacy.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you can figure out what Will and JD are references to, you get a cookie. Seriously, though, they’re totally unnecessary characters, but since Elaine/Alan/Alden/this story in general is recycled from something else I planned but never wrote, they’re still here.

At the end of the day, Jack followed the rest of the crew downstairs to clock out, only to realize that he wasn’t actually able to do so yet. He followed them back upstairs, just in time to meet Elaine, Sarah, and Crutchie coming down from the upper level.

“So, new boy, how was your first day?” Elaine asked.

“Oh, great,” Jack nodded. “Hey, I was wondering, how exactly will we get paid for today?”

“Didn’t Hannah tell you?” Elaine asked, heading for the theatre’s back door. “She or Weisel will clock you in for eight hours today, and every day until she has your login pin ready. Just, once you get it, make sure you check your time sheet and see that they’ve done it. Weisel in particular forgets sometimes, but if he does just say something or or leave a note on his desk and he’ll fix it. Probably.”

Outside, the heat of the late desert afternoon hit them like a brick, but Jack found himself thankful for the lack of humidity compared to New York. The door led to a handful of concrete steps, which in turn led down to the ground level, with a loading bay on the other side of the stairs. In the loading bay were Davey, along with a young boy that looked so much like him that he was definitely Les, Katherine, a tall boy with light brown hair, and a shorter, stockier boy who looked so much like Elaine that they were definitely related. The group was playing hackey sack, bouncing a small foot bag back and forth, although they rarely got more than two passes in.

“Sarah!” Les cheered when she came out, running across the circle to meet her at the bottom of the stairs with a big hug. He looked up at Jack and Crutchie. “Hi. I’m Les. I’m almost ten. What happened to your leg?”

“Les!” Sarah and Davey cried in unison.

“It’s fine,” Crutchie said, hopping off the bottom step. “I get it all the time. I broke my leg when I was just a baby, and it never healed right.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Usually.”

“That sucks.”

“I got used to it,” Crutchie shrugged.

“It still sucks,” Les said. “What’s your name?”

“Charlie, but you can call me Crutchie.”

“Nice to meet you, Crutchie,” Les grinned, sticking out his hand. “Let’s be friends.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Crutchie laughed, shaking the boy’s right hand with his left.

“Les, come on, let’s go home,” Davey joined them. “Mom and Dad’ll be holding supper.”

“This is my brother Davey,” said Les. “He’s a killjoy. I’ll see you tomorrow, Crutchie!”

“See you tomorrow,” Crutchie laughed.

”That’s certainly an interesting kid,” Jack observed, watching the three siblings walk away.

“Les has zero filter,” Elaine laughed. “I’m pretty sure the first thing he said to me was asking about my knee brace.”

“Hey, I’d rather people be up front about asking than dance around it like most do,” Crutchie said.

“Fair enough,” Elaine shrugged. “Oh, hey, this is my brother Alan, and my boyfriend Will.” She pointed to the stocky boy with dark hair and the tall one with sandy brown hair in turn. “Guys, this is Jack and Charlie. They just started today. Charlie is up on spot, but he’s helping with wardrobe for build, so you’ll probably see him around when you have fittings. Jack’s on run crew, though, so you’ll be seeing a lot more of him.”

“Nice to meet you,” Alan grinned.

“Hi,” said Will.

“Where did you two park this morning?” Elaine asked, beginning to head down a sidewalk that ran beside the building.

“Out front,” Jack said. He and the other boys fell in behind Elaine, Will walking a little faster until he was walking beside her, then slipping his hand into hers.

“In the future, you should park out back,” Elaine said. “That’s where crew is supposed to park. Weisel will definitely yell at you if you park out front on a show day.”

“Noted,” Jack said.

“Did you park out front too?” Crutchie asked.

“No, we only live a few streets over so we walk here a lot,” Alan said. “Elaine drives in the mornings, because she’s always late, but our brother Alden is in college, so he takes her car to get to class. She’s the only one with a car.”

“Yeah, and why is that?” Elaine asked, glancing over her shoulder. “It’s because you totaled yours driving like a maniac two years ago. And lost your license, also driving like a maniac. At least Alden doesn’t have a car because he can’t afford to get one, not because he’s a disaster on wheels.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Alan rolled his eyes, his expression clearly stating  _ I hear this all the time _ .

“So, where are you two living? Were you able to find a place close by?” Will asked. They hadn’t noticed it at first, but he spoke with a soft accent. Jack was about to ask about it, hoping to avoid the awkward conversation that would inevitably follow if he answered Will’s question, but Crutchie spoke first:

“We haven’t yet. There isn’t much available right now, and everything that we could find was either all the way on the other side of town, way out of our price range, or both.”

“Where are you staying, then?” Elaine stopped and turned around, her face twisted into a combination of quizzical and confused.

“The back of Jack’s van is still set up to sleep in from the drive out,” Crutchie shrugged. “We’ll stay there for now.”

“No way!” Alan said.

“Yeah, absolutely not,” Elaine shook her head. “It may be hot during the day, but the temperature seriously drops at night. It can get down into the thirties! That’s way too cold to sleep in a car.”

“You can come stay with us,” said Alan.

“Yeah, we have the space,” Will agreed. “Or, at least, we can make it.”

“No, it’s okay,” Jack said quickly. “We’ll be fine. And we wouldn’t want to impose.”

“Dude, we offered,” Elaine laughed. “That means that it wouldn’t be imposing. Now, do you want to drive over, or should we keep walking?”

.*.*.*.*.*.

True to their word, the apartment that Alan, Elaine, Will, and Alden shared was only a few blocks from the theatre. Jack drove them all over in his van, and was directed to a small parking lot in the middle of a long block full of hipster cafes, restaurants, and boutiques in renovated old storefronts. Will, Elaine, and Alan helped the boys carry their things down the block to a storefront that was split in two, a yoga studio on one side and a pottery shop on the other.

“We live over the yoga studio,” Elaine said. “Fortunately, it’s soundproofed, so we can’t hear the classes or anything. I say that’s fortunate, because the classes start at seven in the morning and go until ten at night.”

“Geez,” Crutchie laughed.

They followed Elaine through a tight walkway between the yoga studio and the next building over—a trendy-looking cafe—to the back of the building, which faced a narrow strip of grass between the building and a sketchy-looking back alley. Elaine led them up a flight of weathered wooden stairs, a little shaky with five people climbing them at once, and onto a wide but narrow wooden porch with a small metal table and two wicker chairs. Will opened the door, and they stepped into the apartment.

The entry was a narrow hallway, painted a bright white, that led to another hallway, running perpendicular to it. To the left were three doors, and to the right were two archways and another door. Will turned left, and then went through the door on his right. The room was surprisingly large; the far wall was made up of a pair of huge windows that reached from about two feet above the floor all the way to the ceiling and certainly helped with the expansive feeling of the room; each had white curtains that were pushed open to let the bright early evening light stream into the room. A double bed was pushed against that wall, with a desk wedged between it and the wall to the left. The wall to the right had some sort of folding or French-style doors, but these were blocked off by a bunk bed and a wardrobe, while two more wardrobes were set against the wall adjacent to the door. Will set the bag he was carrying down on the lower bunk bed. “You guys can take the bunk bed. I’ll change the sheets on the bottom then. This wardrobe is empty since Alden moved up to the attic, and I can clear some space in mine too.”

Jack set his things down on the bottom bunk and looked around. The wall to the left of the door was covered in a variety of posters, mostly advertising many different shows that he guessed the boys had performed in, but there were also a handful of band posters, as well as quite a few photos, all of which featured some combination of Alan, Will, Elaine, and two more dark-haired boys. “Are you sure this is okay?” He asked.

“Totally!” Elaine chirped. She set the bag she had carried on the floor in front of the wardrobe Will had indicated was empty and flopped down across the double bed.

“But where are you going to sleep, Will?” Crutchie asked, stepping into the room to allow Alan to enter.

“He can always just sleep in Elaine’s room,” Alan joked.

“If there was room to set up my daybed, sure,” Elaine snorted, “but I am not sharing a twin bed with him every night.”

“I’ll sleep up in the crawlspace with Alden and JD,” Will laughed. “They have an extra mattress up there they use as a couch of sorts.”

“Crawlspace?” Crutchie repeated, mildly horrified.

“JD?” Jack asked.

“Oh, yeah, I guess we haven’t mentioned him yet,” Will mused. “JD is my younger brother. He’s a few years younger than Alden, and came to live with us when he started going to college in town. He and Alden actually go to the same school. And the crawlspace isn’t actually a crawlspace, we just call it that. It’s the attic of the building. It’s actually completely finished and surprisingly not creepy, it’s just barely more than five feet high, so only Elaine can stand upright in it.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to sleep up there or something?” Jack asked. “We don’t want to inconvenience anyone, and I really don’t want to kick you out of your bed.”

“No, it’s fine,” Will laughed. “I actually kind of like it better up there. It’s weirdly peaceful, and Alden and JD keep better hours than Alan. Also, I’m lucking out on this deal, because Alan snores and Alden and JD don’t.”

“Hey!” Alan protested from his seat on the desk chair. “I don’t snore that loud.”

“Yeah, okay,” Will laughed. He moved the bags off of the lower bunk and started to strip the bed. “I guess I might as well just do this now.”

“Do you want a hand?” Jack asked.

“No, it’s fine.”

Elaine rolled herself up and off the bed. “I’ll go grab some blankets for you guys. It really does get cold around here at night.” She slipped out into the hallway and vanished back the way they had come.

“Come on,” Alan said, standing up. “Let’s give Will some space to work; I’ll give you guys the grand tour.”

Back out in the hallway, Alan opened the door opposite the one to his and Will’s room. “This is the bathroom. Obviously, based on the toilet. The shower is in that little room there”—he pointed to the side, where they could see two more doors, one narrow and one about the normal size of a door—“and I think there’s a shelf we can clear off in the closet. Since there’s limited space, we usually keep all our shower stuff in the closet and carry it back and forth. A pain in the butt, but it’s a really tiny shower.” 

He closed the door halfway and took them down the hallway, to the two archways they had seen earlier. The one to the right led to a small kitchen—so narrow that it was practically a galley kitchen—while the one to the left led to a living room about the depth of the bedroom but half again as wide. The living room had three of the large windows that the bedroom had, although they were all blocked by furniture; a square table with four chairs blocked off the two to the left, while a saucer-shaped folding chair made of black corduroy blocked off the one on the right. A long, low sofa was set against the wall to the right, with a coffee table in front of it. Across from the sofa, in the middle of the doors blocked by the bunk beds in Alan’s bedroom, was a simple, low TV stand with a TV, WiFi router, DVD player, and Xbox set up on it. The kitchen was clean and simple, with grey countertops, cabinets, and flooring and polished stainless steel appliances. A narrow counter was set into the hallway-adjacent wall with two black stools tucked under it, and a wide window with more white curtains was above the sink.

Past the kitchen and living room, they nearly ran into Elaine as she came out of the door directly in front of them, carrying two heavy-looking crochet blankets. She waited in the doorway while Alan pointed out the apartment’s last two portals: one, at the top of a steep wooden stairwell—which was more a ladder than stairs, really—was a three-by-three-foot hole in the ceiling, with a shutter that appeared to let it open as wide as six feet. “That’s the crawlspace,” Alan explained. There was another door tucked into the wall beside the ladder-stairs, which Alan informed them actually led to the apartment over the other half of the building, occupied by their landlady. They trooped back down the hall to the bedroom, and Alan pointed out the door at the far end, between the ones to the bathroom and their bedroom. “That’s the stairs down to the washroom. It’s technically storage for the yoga studio, but we can use the washer and dryer.”

“Only between eleven PM and six AM, or on Mondays,” Elaine piped up from behind them. “They don’t want to hear the machines during yoga classes.”

They crowded back into the bedroom, where Will had already finished changing the sheets on the lower bunk. “Here you go,” he said cheerfully, stuffing the sheets into a laundry basket he pulled out from under the bunk.

“And I brought these for you guys,” Elaine added, squeezing past Alan with her blankets. She handed a giant turquoise and purple marbled one to Jack, and a thinner-looking one striped in greens, oranges, blues, and yellows to Crutchie. “My mom made that one”—she pointed to the one in Jack’s arms—“and I made this one. They should be warm enough, but if you get cold, let me know. I have lots more where those came from. And, Jack, that one is pretty heavy, but I can probably dig out a lighter one if it’s  _ too _ warm.”

“I’m sure it’ll be great, thanks,” Jack said.

Elaine smiled and followed Will back out into the hallway.

“Alden and JD are bringing pizza home with them, but they won’t be back for at least another half hour,” Alan said. “Why don’t you guys get settled in? I’ll give you some space.” He exited the room as well, leaving Jack and Crutchie alone.

After a moment, Jack heaved the extremely heavy blue blanket up onto the top bunk, then followed it with his pillow. He used the slats on the end of the bed as a ladder to climb up and looked down at the sheets.

“Hey, Jack, what’s on your sheets?” Crutchie asked a moment later.

“The Star Wars logo,” Jack replied.

“Nice,” Crutchie laughed. “Mine have dinosaurs.”

“These people are weird,” Jack laughed.

“Yeah, but I like them,” Crutchie said. “And you really were right about one thing.”

“Oh yeah?” Jack asked, struggling to spread the huge blanket out over the narrow bed in a reasonable fashion.

“People in Santa Fe sure are nicer than New York.”

.*.*.*.*.*.

Two hours later, Alden and JD arrived, bearing pizza as promised. “I would’ve got something New York-style, but all the pizza places around here are either artisan or chain joints,” Alden laughed. “Elaine said you guys were from New York City. Did she tell you we’re from Boston?”

“I thought she said Pennsylvania,” Jack said.

They were all crammed into the living room, which, while appearing spacious, certainly didn’t feel quite so roomy with seven people squeezed into it. Elaine, Alan, Will, and Crutchie sat around the small table, while Jack and Alden sat on the couch with their plates on the coffee table. JD was folded practically into a pretzel on the saucer chair, his plate balanced precariously on one knee.

“Elaine and I were born in PA, but our parents moved to Boston right before Alden was born,” Alan explained. “We moved back to PA a few years later. Although, she and I went back to Boston for college. So there was a lot of back and forth.”

“Did you move to Santa Fe right after college?” Crutchie asked.

“No, we did some moving around for a while,” Alan said. “A few months in PA—at a theatre really similar to the World, actually—then a few in Atlanta. About a year in London, a few months in Chicago, and then we came to Santa Fe about nine months ago.”

“Did you guys meet in London?” Crutchie asked, gesturing between Will and Elaine.

“No, actually we met in Boston,” Will said. “I got a job as a dancer in a company there when I was seventeen, right as I was finishing school. Alan and Elaine joined the company about a year later. I didn’t end up staying there, and neither did Elaine, but Alan did for the whole time he was at college. Elaine and I were partnered up for choreography, and were dance partners in every other company and theatre we worked at until we moved here and she ‘retired’ from dancing.”

“Why did you retire?” Jack asked. “You said something about bad knees earlier, was it because of that?”

“Sort of,” Elaine replied. “I have a condition called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. It causes hypermobility in joints that can lead to easily spraining and otherwise damaging them. I also have an imbalance of the fluid in my inner ear that we didn’t find out about until recently. That led to me falling a lot, especially as a dancer, and when I fell, I often injured myself. When those injuries didn’t heal properly, it led to a lot of joint pain. When we finished up in Chicago, I decided that I was done dealing with that while dancing, and decided to stop performing—or at least dancing as my career. Not that dressing for shows is much easier.”

“So, if you guys are twins, do you have the same thing?” Jack asked Alan.

“I do, but I don’t have the hypermobility,” Alan said. “At least, not as much. And I don’t dance like Elaine and Alden do anyways, so I’ve never had much of a problem with it. So long as I’m careful, and wrap my joints if I’m using them strenuously, I can generally avoid injury. I do, however, have the skin symptoms of EDS, so I bruise, get cuts, and scar easily.”

“His skin is also super soft and smooth, which makes me genuinely angry,” Elaine laughed.

“What about you?” Jack asked Alden.

“No, our parents had me tested when I was in high school, since the twins were diagnosed when they were that age, but I’m clear,” Alden said.

When they finished dinner, Jack helped Elaine and Will clean up the dishes and empty pizza boxes, then rejoined the others in the living room. Alan and Crutchie had started playing a card game at the table, JD had his nose buried in his phone screen, and Alden had sunk down into the couch and turned on the TV. Jack sat next to him as he scrolled through Netflix, and Elaine plopped down on the other side, Will taking a seat at the table and joining the card game.

“Ooh, they have  _ Robin Hood _ again,” Elaine pointed.

“You have the  _ worst _ taste in movies,” JD said.

“Yeah, we’re not related,” Alden laughed.

“Whatever,” Elaine laughed, sinking deeper into the couch. “I’m just glad we only have one more day of work until the weekend.”

“Last two-day weekend before build, right?” Will asked.

“Three days. We have Labor Day off. Don’t you guys?”

“Um, we probably do,” Alden said. “Who knows. Spice was talking about her plan for rehearsal on Monday, but she might just be confused. That happens.”

“A lot,” Alan mumbled.

“Hey, cut her some slack, she’s a busy woman,” Alden said.

“Well, maybe she’d be less busy if she weren’t such a control freak,” Elaine rolled her eyes. “Hey, what was that with running that one number with lights like it was cue-to-cue today?”

“I have no idea,” Alden sighed. “She wants to use some fancy light effects for it, but she won’t actually let Buttons program it, so we can’t actually run it with  _ those  _ lights until the lighting company comes in for tech week. But she wanted to have spots for it so we can start getting used to the lights for the scene or something? But that doesn’t make sense, because they’re bound to change once we get the lighting designer in. I don’t know.”

“It’s just so weird, because it’s  _ super _ early to have spots,” Elaine said. “I mean, you guys just moved rehearsals to the theatre  _ today _ , and you’ve only been rehearsing your choreography for, what, two weeks?”

“Yeah, that’s the only number we have even mostly choreographed and blocked,” Alden said. “I guess she wants to make it kind of the focal point of the show or whatever, and that’s why we’ve been focusing so much on it so early on, but that also doesn’t make sense because it’s ‘Empty Chairs at Empty Tables’, and I’ve always thought of the barricades as the focal point of Les Mis.”

“Well, I can kind of see it being a focal point, because it’s a big moment for Marius and stuff,” Elaine shrugged. “But running it with spots on your second day on the stage? That’s just weird.”

“Look, I’m not saying you’re wrong, but we are talking about Spice here,” Alden laughed.

“Hey, can we, like,  _ not _ talk about work when we’re at home?” Alan groaned from over at the table. “The only spices I want to hear about outside of the World are the ones in our kitchen.”

The others laughed. “Sure,” Elaine said.

“Happily,” Will added.

“Yeah, I don’t really want to hear about you guys’s work either,” JD added. “Because it seriously sounds like it sucks.”

“It doesn’t suck,” Elaine sighed. “At least, not all the time.”

They lapsed into silence, and Alden picked a movie to watch. Elaine got up and left, then returned with a tangle of yarn and started crocheting something. JD left and went up to the attic, where they could hear him moving around, then came back down and went into the kitchen; a screeching sound indicated that he had pulled out one of the stools and sat at the counter.

“He’s probably doing homework,” Alden explained. “JD doesn’t like to be alone, but he also has to pretend that he hates all of us because he’s just that cool, so he doesn’t usually do group hangouts. Definitely not on school nights.”

Jack stifled a laugh. “Hey, I just wanted to say thanks again to all of youse for letting me and Crutchie stay here for a little while. It means a lot to both of us; neither have been super lucky in the ‘strangers being kind’ department, so this is kind of a new situation for us to be in. So, thanks. We really appreciate it.”

“No problem,” Elaine chirped.

“We only did what we’d want someone to do for us,” Will shrugged.

“Still, you don’t know us,” Crutchie shrugged. “It’s a pretty cool thing to do for a couple of strangers. For all you know, we could be axe murderers.”

“Well, despite his snoring, Alan’s actually a pretty light sleeper, and he’s the buffest person in the house, so, since you’re sharing a room with him, you’re unlikely to actually be able to murder him, at least not without him waking up the rest of us,” Elaine said.

“Personally, I long for the sweet embrace of death,” JD called from the kitchen.

“Yeah, we know, you weirdo,” Alden called back. “Do your psych homework.”

“I’m just saying, if you are actually axe murderers and decide to slaughter us in our sleep, feel free to start with me,” JD returned.


	4. Chapter 4

When Jack woke up the next morning, to brilliant sunlight streaming through the huge windows, both Alan and Crutchie snoring from somewhere closer to the floor, and just starting to sweat under Elaine’s huge heavy blanket, he couldn’t help but noticing that this was the most peaceful morning he had seen in… maybe ever. From somewhere else in the apartment, a song was playing softly, echoing mournfully through the hallway. It sounded oddly like the opening song of  _ The Rescuers. _

As quietly as possible, he climbed down from his bunk and slipped out of the room. In the kitchen, JD was sitting at the counter, reading something from his laptop, while Alan dumped ingredients into a crockpot. He heard a squealing noise, followed by the sound of water running through the pipes in the walls, and guessed that someone was in the shower.

“Morning,” Elaine yawned, rubbing her eyes as she stepped out of her room. She squinted fiercely at him, and Jack noticed that she wasn’t wearing her glasses. “I don’t know who you are.”

“Jack,” he smiled.

“Morning, Jack,” she sighed. She peeked into the kitchen. “Good morning, other boys with dark hair. Why are we listening to the soundtrack of  _ The Rescuers _ ?”

“It has a good morning vibe,” Alden replied without turning around.

“It has a good mourning vibe,” JD said. “Like, mourning with a ‘u’ mourning. Not morning time of day morning.”

“Hm, valid,” Elaine yawned again. “Who’s in the shower?”

“Will, I think,” Alden said.

Elaine nodded and slipped past Jack, heading for the bathroom.

“There’s cereal in the cupboard, Jack,” Alden glanced over his shoulder and smiled. “I was going to make something warm for breakfast, but I didn’t get around to it. But help yourself to the cereal, and there’s at least two types of milk in the fridge, if not more.”

“Why do you need more than one type of milk?” Jack mused as he headed for the cupboard Alden had indicated.

“Me and the twins are lactose intolerant,” Alden laughed. “They get lactose-free milk, and JD and I use almond milk. We sometimes have whole milk too, for cooking, mostly, but I know Will drinks it sometimes. You’re welcome to any of the above. There’s also probably orange juice, and Elaine usually has some aloe juice, although I don’t recommend either of those on cereal…”

“Uh, bowls?” Jack asked.

“Here,” Alden opened a cabinet near his head, grabbed a bowl, and handed it to Jack.

Jack poured himself a bowl of cereal, and added some of the lactose free 1% milk he found in the fridge. “I’m not entirely sure I actually believe this is milk,” he arched an eyebrow as he stared at the carton.

“You might be right about that,” Alden said.

Elaine returned a few moments later, and Jack went to the living room table to make more space in the tiny kitchen. She joined him at the table shortly after, carrying a mug with a spoon—full of dry cereal, which Jack found mildly horrifying—and a mason jar with some sort of slightly cloudy, very pulpy juice. “What is that?” He asked, nodding to the jar.

“Aloe juice,” Elaine said cheerfully. “It’s made from aloe vera, that’s the pulp. They add grape juices to cut the bitterness of the aloe—thankfully, or else it would be disgusting. But it’s really good for your digestive tract. Also, for your hair and skin.”

“It looks…” Jack let the sentence trail off.

“Gross?” Elaine supplied.

“I was thinking questionable, but yeah, gross works too.”

.*.*.*.*.*.

After breakfast, Jack claimed the bathroom to brush his teeth, take a shower, and get ready for the day. He wiped the steam off of the mirror in the tiny shower room after he got out and stared at his reflection. It was the first time he hadn’t seen his face in a gas station or restaurant bathroom mirror in… a while. Even back in New York, he and Crutchie had been couch surfing and occasionally sleeping in the van for a while, since their lease had run out and they had been unable to find a new place—the series of events that had led to them deciding to come out to Santa Fe in the first place. He leaned forward and looked more closely at himself. Even after just one night sleeping in a real bed, the dark circles under his eyes had started to disappear, and he looked and felt more rested than he had in a while.

Someone banged on the door.

“Sorry; just a minute!” Jack called. He grabbed his things and opened the door to find Crutchie grinning at him on the other side.

“Just giving you a hard time,” Crutchie teased. “But, really, we do have to leave soon.”

“Hey, I’m ready; are you?” Jack swatted him on the arm as he slipped past. He smiled to himself as he walked back into their new room. He wasn’t the only one looking better after just that first night in a real place. Crutchie’s brightest smile was back, his eyes were clear, and he even seemed to be moving more easily—Jack had known that sleeping in the van could only be awful for his friend’s bad leg, but Crutchie had never once admitted that or complained about it.

Back in the kitchen, he found Elaine, now dressed in another pair of workout pants and a paint-stained t-shirt and wearing her glasses, wild hair tucked into a French braid, practically bouncing in a pair of tattered pink converse as she chattered to Alden. Alden was packing a reusable grocery bag as he nodded along to Elaine’s monologue, which he then passed to his sister. “Hey, Jack. I’m driving Elaine and Crutchie over to the theatre. Do you want to ride along?”

“Sure,” Jack shrugged.

“Cool,” Alden nodded. He picked up the crock pot and headed for the door; Crutchie met them in the hallway and fell in behind Elaine.

“What about Alan and Will?” Jack asked as they made their way down the shaky wooden stairs.

“Oh, performer call time isn’t until an hour after your shift starts,” Alden said over his shoulder. “I’m leaving early because I have class. Elaine lets me use her car for school. I’ll leave it at the theatre after rehearsal for her and whoever else wants to drive back with her. Oh, and also, I made food for the crew. So you guys won’t have to worry about lunch or anything.”

“Vegetarian nachos,” Elaine said over her shoulder. “Our own recipe. The boys at work love Alden’s cooking, and Alden loves cooking for crowds, so he usually makes a crockpot meal for everyone about once a week.”

“I mean, I think it’s more along the lines of the crew just liking food than specifically my cooking,” Alden laughed. “They’ll eat anything. Just don’t tell Romeo that it’s vegetarian or he  _ won’t _ eat it, even though he  _ has _ eaten it before and likes it.”

After loading into Elaine’s car, Alden drove them all over to the World. As they pulled into the lot, Jack looked up at the giant sign over the front of the building.

“‘All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players’,” Elaine said from the front seat, a note of wonder in her voice. “They say that’s where the name for the theatre came from. I’m not a hundred percent sure I buy it—old man Plummer doesn’t seem like that much of a romantic to me—but it’s a nice story anyways.”

“What’s that quote from?” Jack asked. “It sounds familiar—Shakespeare, right?”

“Yep,” Elaine said.

“ _ As You Like It _ ,” said Alden.

Jack nodded as they rolled to a stop in the back of the theatre. All four of them climbed out of the car, Elaine waving a ‘good morning’ to Race and Elmer as they headed into the building.

“Hey, Jack, you’re going downstairs to clock in, right?” Alden asked.

“Uh, I don’t actually know how to do that yet,” Jack said.

“Weisel hasn’t given them their logins yet,” Elaine said. “He might today, though. If he hasn’t by tomorrow, bug him about it.”

“Would you mind taking this down to the basement and plugging it in for me?” Alden asked, holding out the crockpot. “I’d do it myself, but I’m already running late to class.”

“I can do it if you want,” Elaine said.

“Well, it’s just that I’m not really sure where to plug it in,” Jack shrugged, taking the crockpot from Alden.

“I’ll come along and show you,” Elaine laughed. She grabbed the grocery bag of chips and fixings and followed Jack into the building, Crutchie behind her. “Let’s take the elevator; it’ll be easier with the crockpot.”

In the basement, Elaine showed Jack where to plug in the crockpot, then vanished back towards the elevator with Crutchie, leaving Jack with Elmer, Race, Finch, and Buttons.

The other boys trickled into the basement and took seats around the tables after logging into the computer in the other room. After a while, Weisel appeared, bustling into the locker room. He looked around the group, mumbling to himself as he counted the crew members. “Okay, where’s Isaac?”

“Here!” Sniper called as he jogged from the other side of the room, face flushed and mildly sweaty. He hurried to log in on the computer, then joined the others at the tables.

“Good, everyone is here. Jack, see me after and I’ll give you your new punch code so you can clock in.”

Weisel went on to list their tasks for the day, holding up a large-print typed list over several pages to illustrate his point. “Now, uh, Jack, what were you doing yesterday?” he asked as he began to wrap up the meeting.

“He worked on painting with me,” Snipe piped up. “He’s really good at it, too!”

“Great,” Weisel said. “Keep doing that for now.” He started to walk away, but Jack jumped up and hurried after him.

“Mr. Weisel?” Jack called, having to jog to keep up with Weisel’s quick pace. “You said to talk to you about clocking in?”

“Oh, right,” Weisel nodded, stopping abruptly. He shuffled through the papers in his hand until he found one to hand to Jack. “I already clocked you in for this morning, but you’ll need to use that to clock out and back in for lunch and out at the end of the day today. Ask the other boys; they’ll show you how to use the system.”

.*.*.*.*.*.

Day after day, for the next two weeks, they went through the same routine. In the mornings, Elaine or Alden would drive Jack and Crutchie over to the theatre in Elaine’s car, they’d clock in and work until lunch, eat with the rest of the crew in the cramped false room, then work until Weisel released them for the day. In the first week, they ended their days at five PM. The next week, it was six, and the week after it was pushed all the way back to eight. Elaine and Crutchie’s end of day was pushed back to seven PM in the second week, and nine the week after, although they routinely had to stay even later than their printed end time. When he finished earlier, Jack would usually walk himself home, if it was still light outside, or hitch a ride with one of the other boys—all of whom were happy to give him a lift. He waited for Elaine and Crutchie a handful of times, but, since their end times were so fluid, didn’t usually hang around for long once he clocked out. There were nights when the two walked into the apartment around eleven at night, Elaine fuming and close to tears from frustration (and low blood sugar, as they only had one meal time, which they took at one with the rest of the crew), and Crutchie not much happier.

“You know,” Elaine said one night, halfway through devouring a bowl of grains and vegetables far faster than was probably healthy, “I genuinely would not mind staying until ten or eleven PM if they would just  _ tell us beforehand _ that they even  _ might _ want us to stay that late. And if they would give us time to eat food. Like, yeah, we can  _ technically _ take our lunch hour in two half-hour increments, but if we actually  _ tried _ to clock out for the second half hour, you just  _ know _ that Weasel would pitch an absolute fit.”

Crutchie nodded tiredly, slowly spooning his own food up to his mouth. 

Both of the two had band-aids on several fingers, the result of stabbing their fingertips and knuckles with sharp pins and needles. Half the time, Elaine came home with a pair of rainbow unicorn sewing snips attached to her shirt with a retractable badge-clip, which would inevitably lead to her grumbling, setting them on the counter, and forgetting them for the next several days; each night she forgot to take them back to work with her, she would complain about not having them, but still manage to forget them in the morning.

In all honesty, Jack didn’t fare much better with the crew. He came home with splinters in his hands, covered in paint and sawdust. He got blisters from paintbrushes and screwguns, his knees were bruised from crawling around the concrete floor, and he started to get nosebleeds from breathing in so much sawdust. Lunches went from rowdy affairs full of shouting and lighthearted arguments to the silent repast of the exhausted. The attitudes among the crew soured as tempers grew shorter with the increasing workload.

The highlight of each day, for Jack, was when Davey—usually accompanied by some combination of Katherine and two other boys Jack came to know as Bill Hearst and Darcy Bennett—would arrive at the theatre. Davey came almost every day to pick up Les, and usually arrived earlier than the end time of rehearsal to hang out with Katherine upstairs on the small deck outside of the sewing room, or in the green room if it was dark or the weather disagreed with them. As soon as he walked into the wagon house, Jack would know. He could be on the opposite side of the room from the door, with his back turned, fully involved in conversation with Snipe, and painting some random prop or piece of scenery, but when he heard that door open, something inside of him would go  _ that’s Davey _ and he’d completely lose his train of thought and turn around without consciously deciding to do so, and there would be David Jacobs, silhouetted by the sunshine beating down on the parking lot, his backpack slung over one shoulder, usually dressed in jeans or colored khakis with a printed button-down or t-shirt. At that point, Jack would generally turn into a mumbling mess for whatever time Davey spent in the wagon house, even if the other boy didn’t come to talk to him and Snipe.

Although, Davey did generally cross the wagon house to chat with them. Most days, unless rehearsal had already ended by the time he got there, he would glance around the room until his eyes landed on Jack and Snipe. Then, as the door shut behind him and he became more visible, his face would light up with a cheerful grin and he’d offer them a tiny wave, and he’d weave his way around the rest of the crew and whatever set pieces they were working on—calling out  _ hellos _ and  _ how are yous? _ to them as he passed—until he got to Jack. By this point, Snipe had usually disappeared into the paint corner, ostensibly to mix more paint or make up more wash or clean out brushes they were done with, but more likely to eavesdrop on the awkward conversation that inevitably followed Davey’s arrival.

See, despite the first impression he had made, Davey wasn’t much better of a talker than Jack—at least when it came to conversations between the two of them. He was clearly smart—Jack would have said brilliant—and didn’t stammer as much as Jack tended to, but often mixed up his words or lost his train of thought halfway through a sentence when they talked. Jack, of course, didn’t notice, and even thought it was kind of endearing. It definitely didn’t make David Jacobs seem any less perfect in his eyes.

Jack lived for those awkward conversations. From the time they went back to work after lunch until the second Davey said goodbye, he would practice in his head what he was going to say:

_ Hey, Davey _ , he’d say.

_ Hey, Jack _ would come the response.

_ How’s it going? _ he’d ask.

_ Oh, not so bad. _

_ Here to pick up Les? _

_ Yeah, Katherine and I are going to work on homework upstairs until rehearsal ends. _

_ What are you working on today? _

_ Oh, an assignment for my nonfiction class. We’re working on pieces about historical periods of time. I chose the turn of the twentieth century. _

_ That sounds really cool. You’ll have to tell me more about it sometime. _

_ Yeah, totally! I’d love to! _

Unfortunately, their conversations never seemed to go quite so smoothly…

“Oh, hey, uh…”

“Davey?”

“Yeah. Yup. That’s your name… So, uh… How’s it doin? Or, uh, going. How’s it going. How are you?”

“I’m cool. Fine; you know. So… what are you working on?”

“I’m… painting.”

“Yeah, I can see that. What are you painting.”

“Um… wood.”

“Ah.”

“Oh, sorry. It’s a… table. I guess it’s for that one scene with the… tables.”

“Oh, ‘Empty Chairs at Empty Tables’?”

“...Sure. I don’t really know the show.”

“I only know it because of Les.”

“... So, what are you up to?”

“Oh, just working on homework with Katherine and Darcy. I’ve got a uh… assignment. For my one class—nonfiction.”

“Oh, cool.”

“Yeah, it’s neat. We’re writing about time periods in history.”

“Cool.”

“Yep…”

“Yeah…”

“Well, I should go.”

“Yeah… Not that I want you to go! Sorry, I just don’t want Weisel to think that I’m not working or anything.”

“Oh, yeah, totally. I wouldn't want to get you in trouble!”

“Yeah, thanks…”

“Yep… Well, see ya.”

“See ya… Davey.”

Jack had a tendency to say the name under his breath once Davey was out of earshot. It was like his mouth and brain couldn’t cooperate enough to call the other boy by name when they were actually talking, but started agreeing with each other as soon as the conversations ended. Also as soon as the conversations ended, Snipe would appear just behind Jack’s elbow with a smart-ass comment that would more often than not earn him a jab to the chest from that same elbow.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I’m so sorry. There’s a point in this chapter (you’ll see it if you read it) where it wound up basically just being me ranting about frustrations from work. But, still, catharsis occured thanks to this, which was the whole point of writing this thing, so oh well. Hope y’all don’t mind.

Then, suddenly, they were done with the set. They left the theatre at six o’clock one evening, and Jack looked up at the beautiful sunset coloring the world red. “Wow,” he breathed. Something about the air was different—maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the exhaust from all of the cars backed up on the highway running in front of the theatre, but it felt… freer—and Jack found himself smiling up at the sky, eyes closed as the sun beat down on his face.

“Hey, Jack!”

He opened his eyes to see Alan, Alden, and Will smiling and waving at him from the other end of the sidewalk. He grinned and waved back, jogging to join them back outside the door of the theatre.

“Hey, Jackie boy!” Race grinned, slapping Jack on the shoulder. The skinny boy already had a lit cigarette in his mouth, hanging lazily from between his lips. “Set’s done! And early, too—sure, we’ll have touch-ups and little fixes to do before we open, and for the rest of the run, too, probably, but the majority of it’s done, and that calls for a celebration!”

“‘A celebration’?” Jack repeated. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing crazy,” Elmer shrugged, appearing on the other side of Race as he puffed out a cloud of vape steam. “Just a few drinks at a bar down the road. We’ll give you a ride. “

“Sure,” Jack shrugged. “Who all’s coming?”

“We got Snipe, Finch, and Albert in on it too. Romeo says he’ll come later, he just has to go let his dog out first. Alan’s coming too!”

“Yeah, might as well,” Alan laughed. “It’s not like I have anything better to do anyways.”

“You guys ain’t coming?” Jack looked between Alden and Will.

“I’ve got homework,” Alden sighed. “I’d blow it off, but it’s a big paper, and I know I won’t have any other time to work on it. Show opens in ten days, after all.”

“I teach a dance class at the community center on Wednesdays,” Will sighed. “Not that I really want to go deal with a bunch of hyperactive ten-year-olds after rehearsal, but I’m looking on the bright side here: after tonight, I only have one more class that I’ll have to deal with them for.”

“Hey, Davey, Katherine!” Elmer called.

Jack felt his ears get hot.

“Hey, Elmer; what’s up?” Katherine said, beaming brightly.

“We’re going for drinks! You two wanna come along?”

“I gotta take Les home,” Davey said, patting the boy on the shoulder.

“Then come after,” Race shrugged. “We’ll be there.”

“We’ll see,” Davey laughed. He and Les squeezed through the small crowd, heading for the parking lot.

“We’ll be at the usual place!” Race called after Davey.

“Come on, Alan and Jack! You can ride with me.” Elmer waved for them to follow as he slipped his vape into his pocket and headed for his car.

“See you later,” Alden called, waving. He and Will were halfway down the sidewalk by the time Jack and Alan had climbed into Elmer’s car. The bar wasn’t far away; a ten minute drive or less. It was an old building with an awkward parking lot and a dark green roof, which helped it stand out from the more modern buildings around it. Inside, the barroom was dimly-lit, despite the fact that there were expansive windows in both outer walls of the room. Snipe, Finch, and Albert had already claimed a pair of tables by the front window and ordered their own drinks; they offered up a cheer as Jack, Elmer, Alan, and Race approached.

A harried-looking waitress came to take their orders at the same time as Katherine walked into the room.

“Is anyone else coming? I can have the kitchen hold your food orders until they get here.”

“This is everyone we  _ know _ is coming, so you can go ahead and put them through,” Albert said.

The waitress, looking relieved, nodded and hurried off. She returned a few minutes later with their drinks. Jack sipped at his beer—he had ordered a local brew, and it wasn’t half bad—and listened to the conversation swirling around him. He was sitting next to Race, who was across from Albert, with Finch across from Jack; the other table had Katherine and Alan on one side and Elmer and Snipe on the other. Race kept half-standing in his seat to trade smart comments with Snipe over Albert and Alan’s heads. Finch rolled his eyes and turned to Jack.

“They’re so loud,” he sighed, taking a sip of his own beer, the same label as Jack’s. “So, you’ve been here a few weeks now. What do you think of Santa Fe?”

“Oh, it’s great,” Jack shrugged. “I mean, pretty much all I’ve seen of it is the World, the street we live on, the stuff between, and the nearest grocery store, but it’s great.”

Finch laughed. “Yeah, I guess build isn’t exactly the best time to explore the city.”

“Is it always like this?” Jack asked.

“Oh, no, not at all,” Finch shook his head and sipped his beer. “Christmas is way worse.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s promising,” Jack rolled his eyes.

“It sucks,” Race interrupted, leaning towards them. “You know how late we’ve had to stay to work on this show?”

“Yeah,” Jack said, arching an eyebrow.

“Christmas is usually later,” Race said.

“We’re lucky to get out by nine most nights once build goes into full swing,” Finch sighed.

“And stop-and-go is just as bad,” Race nodded.

“What’s ‘stop-and-go’?” Jack asked. “Elaine and the guys have mentioned it a few times, but no-one’s actually explained what it is.”

“Oh, that’s when we all, like, write our tracks that we’ll run for the show,” Race said.

“Basically, they put all the performers and everyone on the stage and make them go through each step of their blocking; every line of every scene and song for the entire show,” Albert said.

“Theoretically, it’ll take about one work day per act,” Finch added. “But it never seems to go quite that smoothly.”

“Yeah, it’s usually at least a day and a half,” Race sighed.

“Then, once that’s all sorted out, we start doing dress rehearsals,” said Albert.

“See, the World is weird about that,” Alan piped up from behind Albert. “Most theatres don’t do stop-and-go—which I’ve heard called cue-to-cue more often than stop-and-go anyways—in costume, or at least not full costume, they usually just do big pieces that will affect the lighting design.”

“Well, we can’t exactly call it cue-to-cue since we hardly have any cues,” Katherine said. “Since everything’s live, and Spice doesn’t do a lot of sound cues outside of music, there’s little to nothing for Elmer and Finch to do besides mix, and the spots are follow spots, so they’re not set. Most of the cues are for Buttons, and the lighting company comes in to put those in during stop-and-go.”

“Technically, even the live music has cues, it just works a little differently, since it’s Andy conducting, not just Elmer pressing buttons,” Alan said.

“Yes, I know, everything in a production is cued by something, all I’m saying is that you can’t be like ‘go to sound cue five’ because there isn’t a sound cue five that Elmer just presses a button to start,” Katherine argued. “Instead, we just sort of stop wherever we have to so we can work on things.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever you say, Spice Junior,” Elmer snorted into his glass.

“Hey, just because I’m right doesn’t mean you have to be so mean about it!” Katherine protested.

“Oh, so you admit that nicknaming you after Spice is ‘mean’, because you know it’s an insult because Spice sucks?” Race teased.

“Oh, come on, she isn’t  _ that _ bad,” Katherine protested. “I mean, sure, she’s kind of a lot to handle in large doses sometimes, and she can be a little… picky. But she’s not so bad.”

“Yeah, but you don’t gotta work with her,” Albert said. “You just get to come in and hang out, and she’s always going to be on her best behavior when you’re around since your daddy owns the World.”

“Hey, I  _ do _ have to work with Spice, and I don’t think she’s awful,” Alan protested. “Kind of particular, yeah, but not awful.”

“Yeah, but that’s different,” Albert rolled his eyes.

“How so?”

“You’re a performer, so she actually likes you,” Albert shot back.

“She doesn’t treat you like a second-class citizen,” Race grumbled.

“All Spice wants from the crew is to make her dreams come true, with no consideration of what that might take and whether or not it’s even possible,” said Elmer.

“Otherwise, all she wants is for us to shut up and be invisible,” Snipe said.

“As far as Spice—and Plummer, and Hearst, and Bennett—are concerned, the crew, and everyone else who works in the theatre who isn’t in the office, management, or a performer, is scum, no better than the dirt on their shoe,” Albert grumbled.

“Okay, that’s not true,” Katherine protested.

“Really?” Albert turned in his seat to glare at her. “Name one thing that your father, the rest of the owners, or— _ or _ , not and—anyone else in the office or management do for their employees?”

“There’s crew appreciation day,” Katherine said. “Plus the Christmas party and company picnic.”

“Oh, you mean their apologies for making us work eighty-hour weeks during Christmas without bothering to pay us an actual living wage if we don’t get overtime?” Albert shot back. “‘Here’s some food, keep working for us and pretend we appreciate you’. Not to mention, during the Christmas party, they talk about how great the Christmas show is, but never bother to mention anything that the crew does for it. Maybe a passing ‘oh, hey, thank you for building the set’, but even that generally goes to the shop crew. Never a ‘hey, thanks for spending every waking moment in this fucking building running a show that no-one can bother to thank you for’, or anything like that. The last Christmas party, your dad said something like ‘let’s not forget the crew for building the set and running the shows’, and then moved on to praising the performers and Spice right away.”

“If you hate it so much, maybe you should find another job,” Katherine retorted.

By this point, everyone’s drinks had been abandoned. Albert and Katherine were on the edges of their seats, leaning towards each other, both with sparks in their eyes, lips set in firm lines, and scowls furrowing their foreheads. Alan, stuck between them, seemed concerned for his health.

“I would find another job, if I could,” Albert grumbled, slipping back into his seat. “Nowhere’s hiring.”

Katherine sat back as well, turning to take a long draught of her Sex on the Beach. She remained silent.

“You know, Kath, if you heard some of the actual stories that Elaine and these guys had about Spice, you might change your mind,” Alan said softly.

“I know Spice isn’t always the best person ever—I’m not trying to say that she is, because honestly, everyone has their worse moments—but she’s really not awful,” Katherine insisted.

“Dude, did you know that she literally won’t talk to us?” Finch finally got involved in the conversation, turning around to face the back of Katherine’s head. “If she has something to say to us, she tells Weasel or the TD to tell us for her, even if we’re standing right there. Even if it’s a compliment.”

“Yeah, Elaine’s actually said that too,” Alan said.

“Okay, come on, that can’t be tru”—

Katherine was interrupted by the return of their waitress with the food. Personally, Jack had never been so happy to see any food service worker in his life. He accepted his burger happily and dug into it immediately. Everyone else turned to their food with just as much vigor, and they fell into a tense silence.

“So, Race,” Jack kept his voice low and addressed his question to the nearest person to him, “what  _ exactly _ do we do during stop-and-go?”

“Well, you’re run crew, and you’re going to be working backstage, like me, Albert, Henry, Mike and Ike, JoJo, and Romeo. Finch is kind of run crew too, but he’s the A2, which means he does the backstage mixing and learns Elmer’s track so he can fill in if Elmer gets sick or anything. Henry’s the A3, so he learns Finch’s track, in case Finch misses a show or has to fill in for Elmer. Other than that, we all just have our own tracks to run.”

“What’s a ‘track’?” Jack asked.

“Your track is just everything you do in the course of the show—and during pre-show, intermission, and after the show, if there’s anything then—and you kind of like… write it all down until you memorize it,” Race shrugged. “It’s like, during this song I do this, and after this one I do this, and stuff like that. Weasel likes to have it written down as, like, proof we actually know what we’re doing, and in case he has to fill in for anyone last minute for a show or something.”

“Got it,” Jack nodded, turning back to his food.

“It’ll probably make a lot more sense once we actually get into it tomorrow,” Race shrugged.

Jack nodded again.

“You’ll also get your first dose of Spice,” Albert grumbled.

“Oh my gosh, Albert”—Katherine started, turning to face him again.

“Hey, guys!” Davey’s voice cut through whatever comment Katherine was about to make to Albert, and the tension between the tables melted away almost immediately.

“Hey, Davey!” came a chorus from the rest of the crew boys.

“Glad you could make it!” Alan added, toasting Davey with his beer bottle.

“Hey, pull up a chair,” Race leaned around Jack and pointed at an empty table nearby.

“Is it okay if I take one of those?” Davey asked the waitress as she passed.

“Sure that’s fine,” she called over her shoulder, not stopping as she bustled back towards the kitchen.

Davey grabbed a chair from the empty table and dragged it over, setting it at the end of the table, between Jack and Finch.

“Hey, David,” Jack stammered, feeling his ears go red… then his cheeks… then his nose and forehead…

“Hey!” Davey smiled and nodded, his head bobbing for just a little too long.

“You, uh, hunger—hungry?” Jack asked, pushing his plate, half-full with chunky-cut fries, towards the other boy.

“Just a little; my mom always makes me eat when I come home from school,” Davey laughed awkwardly.

“Hey, that’s great,” Jack said. “At least you’s got a mom to make you eat.” Immediately, he kicked himself mentally.  _ What a great way to start your first conversation outside of work, dumbass. _

“Uh… yeah, that’s true,” Davey nodded, his eyes wide. He stared down at the plate between their elbows for a long moment. “So uh…”

“My mom died,” Jack said. “When I was a kid. It’s fine.”

“Right,” Davey nodded.

“I mean, it’s fine now,” Jack said. “It sucked back then.”

“I’m sure,” Davey nodded faster. “So, uh… what about your dad?”

“He died too,” Jack said.

“Oh, wow,” said Davey. “That… sucks?”

“Yeah, he was in prison, and got sick. My mom was in an accident.” Vaguely out of the corner of his eye, he could see the looks of horror plastered on Alan, Albert, and Finch’s faces. From the slight shaking on his left side, he had a feeling Race was laughing silently. “What, uh… what about your parents?”

“Well, they’re both alive,” Davey said, still nodding. “Although my dad might not have long.”

Finch’s elbow slipped off of the table. Albert and Race excused themselves. Jack saw Katherine turn slightly to give them a bewildered look over her shoulder.

“That came out wrong,” Davey said abruptly. “He uh… he got diagnosed with cancer a little while ago. It’s not too serious, but they can’t operate on it, so they’re hoping that they can clear it up with radiation.”

“Wow, that sucks,” Jack said.

“Yeah, but at least he’s still around,” Davey said. “I’m mostly worried about how Les will do if anything does happen. He’s still pretty little.”

“He’ll be fine,” Jack said. “He seems like a tough kid, and he’s got a whole family to help him through it.”

Davey smiled and nodded again, but seemed a little more at ease.

“So, hey, tell me some more about that project you were working on,” Jack said, picking up one of the fries left on his plate. “The one on a time period in history?”

“Oh, for my nonfiction class!” Davey perked up suddenly, his eyes bright. “Yeah, we were supposed to choose either a specific year and look at it across the country, or a whole decade in a specific, like, city or state. I’m doing 1900 to 1910 in New York City.”

For the next ten minutes, Davey filled Jack in on all of the details of his project. Jack learned more in those ten minutes than he had in any history class in school, but, if you’d asked him about any of it later, he wouldn’t have been able to repeat anything Davey had said.

“So, yeah, I basically have to write this piece that presents all of that information in a concise, easy to read, yet entertaining format, which is surprisingly harder than it sounds,” Davey shrugged.

“That sounds pretty hard to me,” Jack laughed—a little too loudly. Albert and Race, who had returned at some point, traded an eye roll.

“So what do you do, Jack?” Davey asked. “I mean, I know you work at the theatre, and do a lot of painting, but like… what do you do for fun?”

“Well, not a lot at this point,” Jack shrugged. “Work’s been keeping me pretty busy. But I like to draw and do watercolor painting, so I guess you can say my personality doesn’t have a lot of dimension to it.”

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not true,” Davey said.

“I mean, not like I think I’m a boring person,” Jack said quickly. “I mean, I’m not saying that I’m necessarily very interesting, but you know… I don’t do much for, like, fun. Mostly just art. Some reading. I was trying to learn how to play the guitar, but it didn’t fit in the van so I sold it before we moved out here.”

“That’s pretty cool!” Davey said. “I’ve always thought people who play the guitar are cool. I always wanted to learn, but my mom wanted me to learn the piano, so I took lessons through most of my time in school.”

“Oh, that’s neat!” Jack said. “Do you still play?”

“Every now and then,” Davey shrugged. “I don’t really have a lot of time for much of anything between school and homework, driving Les around, and helping out my mom at home.”

“Well, I’d love to hear you play sometime,” Jack said. “I’m sure you’re great.”

“Only if you play guitar for me sometime, too,” Davey laughed.

“Hey, if I get my hands on a guitar anytime soon, and we can both find some free time, I’ll not only play it for you, I’ll teach you how to play!”

“Sounds like a plan,” Davey laughed.

.*.*.*.*.*.

A few hours and several beers later, Jack, Davey, Alan, Finch, and Albert—everyone else having already left—made their way out of the bar.

“Careful there,” Davey chuckled, catching Jack’s arm as he stumbled over the door jamb. “You didn’t drive here, did you?”

“No, Elmer drove us,” Jack said, steadying himself. He was very aware of the fact that Davey didn’t let go of his arm right away.

“Elmer?” Davey arched an eyebrow.

“Ah… yeah,” Jack sighed. “Elmer, who left like an hour and a half ago.”

“It’s fine, I’ll drive you,” Davey laughed. “Where do you live?”

“You’ve been to my place before, right Davey?” Alan appeared on Davey’s other side and slung his arm awkwardly over the taller boy’s shoulder.

“Yeah, why?”

“Oh, Jack and Crutchie are staying with us,” Alan yawned.

“Then I guess I’m driving you home too,” Davey laughed, slipping out from under Alan’s arm.

“Thanks,” Alan beamed.

“See you guys tomorrow!” Albert called, already halfway across the parking lot to his car. Finch waved from behind the open door of his truck, before climbing in and starting it.

Alan and Jack followed Davey to his car, a beat-up golden-tan sedan. Alan crawled into the backseat, leaving Jack to the front passenger seat. “One of you guys might have to give me directions; I’m not sure I can remember the whole way there,” Davey said, adjusting his rear view mirror.

“Yeah, no problem,” Alan yawned. “Just head back to the theatre for now.”

They drove mostly in silence; Jack left the directions to Alan, since he had a better knowledge of the area, and preferring instead to watch Davey—as subtly as possible—rather than their surroundings. Something about the way the golden streetlights highlighted his dark hair created a sort of halo effect that Jack, especially in his slightly addled state, couldn’t seem to take his eyes off of. 

The ride was shorter than Jack would’ve liked it to be. It felt like he blinked twice and they were already pulling up in front of the yoga studio. Davey turned to him and offered him a grin. “See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, probably,” Jack managed. “At least, I hope so.”

Davey smiled softly. “Me too.”

Alan sneezed in the backseat.

“See ya.” Jack opened the door and clambered awkwardly out of the low car. He bent down to give Davey one last smile, then pulled the lever to pull the front seat forward and let Alan out of the backseat. They waved at Davey as he pulled away, then headed to the stairs at the back of the building.

Upstairs, they were surprised to find not only the porch light left on for them, but the glow of the living room light illuminating the hallway. Curious, they headed for the living room. “Who’s still up at almost one AM?” Alan whispered. Jack shrugged.

In the living room, they found Alden seated on the couch, his feet propped up on the coffee table, watching something on the TV with the volume turned most of the way down. On his left, Elaine was curled into a little ball, tucked against Alden’s side, under one of her handmade blankets, with her brother’s arm around her shoulders and her head resting on his shoulder. On Alden’s right, Crutchie was slouched down into the couch, his left foot propped on the coffee table, his knee resting against Alden’s; his head had fallen back and to the side, so that it rested on the back of the couch, his cheek against Alden’s shoulder. Both Elaine and Crutchie were sound asleep—Elaine snoring softly under her blanket, Crutchie’s chest rising and falling in deep, even breaths. Jack and Alan traded smiles.

“Hey there,” Alan whispered from the doorway.

Alden’s head shot up. He grinned and looked at the sleeping faces resting on his shoulders. “I’m stuck.”

“How long have they been out?” Alan asked, crossing his arms and leaning against the doorway.

“They got back a little after ten thirty, ate, and were asleep by like… eleven. Maybe quarter after. Elaine went first, but Crutchie didn’t last much longer.”

Alan glanced back at Jack. “I’ll get Elaine; you got him?”

“Yeah,” Jack chuckled.

Alan picked Elaine up easily, one arm around her shoulders and one under her knees. They heard a soft thump from down the hall a few seconds after he left the living room.

“He probably ran her into the doorway,” Alden laughed. “Not that it would be the first time.”

Jack pulled one of Crutchie’s arms up and around his own shoulders, slipping his own arms around the smaller boy’s back and under his knees. It wasn’t the first time he had carried his friend like this, and he was always surprise how easy it was to lift Crutchie up. Freed from the others, Alden stood and stretched; he grabbed Crutchie’s crutch and followed Jack to their room.

“Here,” Alden whispered, slipping past Jack to pull back the covers on Crutchie’s bed so Jack could set him down.

“Thanks,” Jack nodded.

Once Crutchie was settled—Jack was really amazed he hadn’t woken up during the transfer—Alden set the crutch against the wall and left. Jack untangled himself from his clothes and tossed them into the hamper, pulling on an old t-shirt and gym shorts to sleep in. Alan came back into the room, yawning.

“Those two must be exhausted,” Jack murmured, glancing over his shoulder at Crutchie.

“Yeah,” Alan nodded. “I mean, the twelve-plus hour days can’t be easy, and Carol and Weasel are fairly…  _ emotionally _ draining from what I understand. It should get easier once we open next weekend, though. At least a little. Probably more a week or so in, once everything really settles down.”

Jack nodded. He went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. He braced his hands on the sink and stared into his reflection, pale and ragged between how tired he was, the alcohol he’d consumed, and the fluorescent light over the mirror. A small smile twisted his lips.  _ Today was a good day _ .


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, more ranting. I'd say I'm sorry, but I'm kind of not...

Jack spent the next two days bored out of his skull. Stop-and-go was even worse than he had expected. They had the same call time in the mornings that they’d had for the past several weeks, eight AM, and spent the first hour working on details of the set. Then, once the performers arrived—a whirlwind of warbling voices and high kicks and spinning pirouettes—the crew would set up the stage for the first scene. Not that the performers would be ready for another hour, at the earliest. This is when Elaine and Sarah would appear, wearing aprons full of safety pins, looking harried as they sorted through disorganized clothing racks for costume pieces, trying to sort out who was supposed to be wearing what when. Crutchie and Snipe would head up to the catwalk, Buttons and Elmer to their booth at the front of the house—apparently, at least according to Alden, that’s what the theatre’s auditorium was called—Finch to a mobile sound board on stage left. Race would station himself by the fly rail on stage right. Weisel sent Jack to stage right, with Race, as well as Mike and Ike, Albert, and Elaine. On the other side, with Finch, were Henry, JoJo, and Romeo, along with Sarah.

“So, Mike and Ike generally do most of the running between sides of the stage,” Race explained. “They’re always switching places anyways and know each others’ tracks, so we generally let them do their own thing. We’ll keep you on this side for this show at least, unless for some reason we need literally everyone on the other side of the stage, but I don’t think we have anything that big for this show that Mike, Ike, and the stage left guys couldn’t handle it, and I don’t think there are times when we have so _many_ things that we’d need more than them over there. And Albert can always run over, too.”

“What’s this?” Jack asked, gesturing at the rail they were leaning against. It was a long metal railing, with red pegs spaced evenly along its entire length. There were ropes on the other side of the railing, locked into place by the pegs, and running high up into the ceiling, but also down below the stage floor, into somewhere in the basement that Jack hadn’t discovered yet.

“This is the fly rail,” Race explained. “So, when we have a set piece, or, like, a flag or something that needs to come in and out from the top of the stage, we hang it up there and use these ropes to fly it in and out. It’s not too bad; you’re strong enough, so I’ll teach you how to use it. Chances are I’ll need help with it anyways, and I don’t like letting the twins use it. They don’t take it seriously enough.”

Jack nodded. He grinned and nodded at Alden and Will as they walked onstage along with a whole troupe of performers, all in full costume. He could see Alan on the other side of the stage, along with a bouncing Les. Elaine slipped out of the wagon house, already looking frustrated. Her dark hair was exceptionally wild, yanked back to be out of her face, and she was dressed simply in black workout capris and a tank top, along with a black waitress’s apron; the tops of the pockets were lined with safety pins, and she had a selection of enamel pins (Jack recognized Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon and Totoro, plus a small cactus and a coffee cup) in the bottoms of the corner pockets.

“How’s it going, tiny?” Albert squished the messy bun on top of Elaine’s head.

“Oh, about as expected,” Elaine grumbled. “No-one looked through their look sheets, so they don’t know what they’re supposed to be wearing when, and I haven’t been able to memorize them yet so I can’t help much. We’re missing shoes, because apparently Weasel sent them to the shoe guy to be rubbered without telling anyone, and they’re supposed to be wearing them starting today to break them in and get used to dancing in them. We have hems that are too long because we haven’t gotten to them yet, even though everything from act one has _supposedly_ been done, so I had to pin up three skirts, and I think Sarah did another one or two. Half the boys are missing hats, there are half a dozen coats with bags of buttons pinned to them, because the buttons they came with are supposed to be replaced, but Carol wasn’t letting anyone but Crutchie and sometimes me work on them, so obviously they haven’t been done because that’s too much for one person to do alone, but Carol’s trying to make a point or something—who knows what it is, though. Nothing has been pressed, so they all look like a mess. Bradley already broke a shoelace, somehow; Randy’s hat doesn’t fit. You know; the usual. Sorry for ranting.”

“Eh, it keeps things interesting,” Albert sighed, leaning back against the fly rail.

“Yeah, give us all the dirt,” Race laughed. “No-one tells us anything.”

Elaine scoffed. “I know the feeling.”

“You ready to do this?” Albert asked. He grabbed Elaine by the shoulders and squeezed, giving her a little shake.

Jack noticed that almost half the cast was heading back off the stage, and Spice—who he hadn’t noticed before—was climbing down into the house.

“Ugh, _no_ ,” Elaine groaned, turning to follow the performers into the wagon house.

“Is she okay?” Jack asked, watching Elaine as she knelt on the floor in front of one of the girls from the cast, fidgeting with the hem of her skirt.

“Eh, she’s fine,” Albert shrugged. “Elaine gets stressed, but it seems like if she vents about it a little—which she will happily do even if she’s not stressed—she’s fine. Plus, it’s kind of funny sometimes. She gets worked up pretty easily.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed,” Jack laughed.

“What’s she like to live with?” Race asked.

“I’ll let you know once I actually spend some time at home with her,” Jack said. “I hardly ever see her. She and Crutchie haven’t even been getting home until after ten or eleven lately, and she hides in her room most of the time. I feel like I see more of her just at lunch here than at home.”

“Fair enough,” Race laughed.

They spent the next two and a half hours crawling through the first three scenes of the show. It was agonizing. From the looks of it, the performers on stage weren’t having much more fun than the crew, but, as far as Jack was concerned, at least they were _doing_ something. The crew did some joking around, but any time their voices rose above a loud whisper, Weisel would appear out of nowhere to shush them. In the wagon house, they could hear whatever cast wasn’t onstage laughing and joking, practicing snippets of songs, and so on. At one point, he walked back into the wagon house, just to stretch his legs and roll his shoulders without worrying about swinging his arm into a set piece. Most of the kids on the cast were sitting or lying on a large carpet Weisel had had the crew lay out over a chunk of the wagon house floor that morning, in front of a pair of huge wheeled mirrors. Elaine and Sarah were sitting on the carpet as well, hunched over some hand sewing. Les was laying on his stomach next to Sarah, chattering happily away.

Finally, at one thirty, Spice released the cast for lunch. Race and Albert practically grabbed Jack and bodily hauled him into the basement to clock out. “Come on, we’re going to Burger King,” said Albert.

“If we leave for lunch, Weasel can’t try and cut our break short—although he’ll try to anyways,” Finch explained, appearing behind them.

“This is where we feel sorry for wardrobe,” Snipe said as he and Crutchie entered the room. “They can’t clock out until everyone is back in costume, and they have to be back _before_ the performers to help them back into costume.”

“Yeah, we’ll say a prayer in their memory,” Albert snorted. He grabbed Jack and hauled him back upstairs and out the door, Race and Finch on their heels.

“Don’t worry, we told Snipe to make sure Crutchie gets something to eat,” Race slapped Jack on the shoulder, pulling out a cigarette and sticking it behind his ear.

“Hey, if you’re smoking, you’re driving,” Albert said. “No cigs in my car.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Race mumbled, pulling out his keys and jingling them.

“Hey, Elaine, Sarah!” Jack stopped abruptly. The girls were on the carpet in the middle of the wagon house, chatting quietly as performers whirled around them, half in, half out of costume. “You guys want anything to eat?”

“Jack, I will literally love you forever if you bring me food,” Elaine groaned, making to hug him.

“Nope,” Jack deftly avoided the hug by ducking behind Race. “You’ll stab me with a safety pin. Whaddaya want? Sarah, you want anything?”

After they had the girls’ orders, they finally made it out of the building. Race drove, windows cranked all the way down so the smoke from his cigarette wouldn’t fill the car, even though it was drizzling steadily outside.

“It rains here?” Jack marveled, holding out his hand to catch the fine raindrops.

“Yeah, it’s like an average of three days a month in the fall,” said Finch.

When they got back to the theatre, they found Elaine perched on the metal railing of the steps up to the back door, Elaine seated on the steps, and Crutchie and Snipe standing at the bottom of the stairs. “Here you go,” Jack said, passing the girls their food.

“Jack Kelly, you are literally my favorite person on the planet right now. Like, I could cry I’m so happy.” Elaine flung an arm around his shoulders for a quick hug. “Let me know how much I owe you.”

“Just buy me food sometime and we’ll call it even,” Jack laughed.

“Sounds good,” Elaine nodded happily, already munching her way through her fries.

The afternoon went much as the morning had, but lasted twice as long. Around three thirty, Jack heard the door to the wagon house open. He glanced over and felt his heart skip a beat; standing there, and accompanied by an abnormally cool and damp gust of air, were Davey, Katherine, and Darcy. Katherine and Darcy went over to the gaggle of performers on the carpet, but Davey slipped through the side stage door and joined Jack, Race, and Albert leaning against the fly rail.

“Hey,” Jack nodded at him.

“Afternoon,” Davey grinned back.

Unseen by Jack, Albert and Race looked at each other and rolled their eyes, hiding grins.

“How was class?”

“Not too bad. I got back my last project for one of my journalism classes and got a better grade back than I was expecting. How’s your first stop-and-go?”

“Well… There’s definitely more ‘stopping’ than ‘going’.”

Davey chuckled. “Yeah, I’ve sat in on a couple now and that’s about what I’ve seen.”

“I think this is the most bored I’ve ever been at work—and at any job I’ve worked.”

“Welcome to the exciting world of theatre,” Race snorted.

“Has Les been onstage yet?” Davey asked.

“No, it’s been grownups and little girls so far,” Albert said.

Davey nodded. “Les made me watch the movie last weekend, but that doesn’t actually translate into knowledge of the stage show, so I’m not really clear on where he comes in.”

“No idea,” Albert yawned. He pushed himself off of the fly rail and walked over to Mike and Ike, further down the stage.

“It’s like they just stand around, and then they’ll run a few lines of the song with singing and dancing and music and everything, and then they’ll stop,” Jack sighed. “And then they go back, and do it all again slower, over and over, or one person at a time, and it’s just… mind numbing.”

“I can imagine,” Davey nodded, looking out at the stage.

“David, performers and crew backstage only,” Weisel bustled by them, arms pumping at his sides.

“He’s really going today,” Davey smirked, pushing off of the fly rail. “See ya, Jack.”

“Later, Davey.”

.*.*.*.*.*.

Once rehearsal was finished for the day, the performers left. Weisel sent Crutchie back upstairs with Sarah and Elaine to help wardrobe, and set the rest of the crew to a series of small tasks around the stage and set. They were released shortly after sunset, and Finch gave Jack a ride home.

When he entered the apartment, damp but happy he hadn’t had to walk home in what had turned into a steady shower of rain without an umbrella, Jack was immediately hit with the scent of cooking food. Upon investigating, he found Alden and Will in the tiny kitchen, Alden cooking furiously on the stovetop while Will chopped vegetables and cooked meat.

“Hey,” Jack said.

Alden jumped. “Jack! You’re home early! That’s great.”

“Whaddaya makin’?” Jack asked, peering over his shoulder.

“Just stir fry,” Alden shrugged. “Nothing fancy. There’s plenty; you want?”

“Sure,” Jack said. He left the kitchen and went to change in his room, where he found Alan hunched over the desk next to his bed.

“Hey, you’re home already! That’s great!” Alden half-turned in his seat to grin at Jack. “Does that mean Spice didn’t give any big set notes to Weasel?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Jack shrugged. “He didn’t have much for us to do after rehearsal. I have a feeling Crutchie and Elaine won’t be getting out any earlier than normal, though, if what she was saying this morning is any indication.”

“Hey, on the bright side, we actually have a two-day weekend coming up,” Alan said. “The last weekend we’ll have for the run of the show, since we’ll have shows on the weekends coming up.”

“Well, according to Weasel, that’s apparently ‘pending’ for all of us,” Jack sighed. “If we have too much to do, we’ll have to work Saturday.”

“Gross,” Alan wrinkled his nose. “Hopefully that doesn’t happen.”

“Yeah, I sure hope so,” Jack grumbled.

“Food’s ready!” Alden called from down the hall.

They ate in the living room, around the table. JD dragged one of the stools in from the kitchen and perched at the end of the table to eat with the others, although he didn’t contribute much to the conversation—and actively complained about having to hear about anything related to the theatre every time it came up. Jack didn’t mind; he was happy to pretend that the theatre, _Les Miserables_ , and anything else connected to them didn’t exist outside of working hours—or, at least at mealtimes.

After dinner, Alden and JD climbed up into their bedroom—“When Elaine and Crutchie come home, let them know there’s food for them in the fridge. I put it in portioned containers so all they have to do is stick them in the microwave.” Alden said as he climbed up the ladder. Alan returned to his room, and Will brought his laptop down from the crawlspace and set up at the living room table. Jack flopped onto the couch and turned on the TV, propping his feet up on the coffee table, just happy to have some time (mostly) to himself; it wasn’t easy to find privacy with seven people crammed into a tiny apartment.

Elaine and Crutchie were home early, before nine o’clock. Elaine went straight into her room, and they heard a thump and creaking noises as she (presumably) flopped onto her bed. Crutchie joined Jack on the couch with a sigh, sinking slowly into his seat.

“Alden left food for you guys in the fridge,” Jack said. “You want I should heat it up for you?”

“Would you mind?” Crutchie said, his voice a sigh.

“Sure,” Jack laughed. He patted his friend’s knee as he stood up and headed into the kitchen. “So, how was _your_ first day of stop-and-go?”

“ _That_ part of the day was fine,” Crutchie grumbled, pulling off his shoes. “It was basically just me and Snipe hangin’ out and talking on headset—even Buttons wasn’t really paying attention to us most of the time. Snipe got me to play this game he said Elaine came up with in the last stop-and-go, when she was up on spots, that she calls ‘where’s Finch’. Basically, any time Finch walks onstage—because he goes onstage more than anyone else, to check mics and stuff—you stop whatever you’re saying and just go ‘Finch!’ and the other person has to find him. It’s pointless, but weirdly entertaining.”

Jack laughed, returning with the bowl of food and a fork. “Here ya go. Glad you had a decent day, at least.”

“Didn’t you?”

“I mean, it wasn’t _bad_ , per se, just… so, incredibly, insanely boring.”

Crutchie laughed. “That’s pretty much what it looked like from the catwalk.”

“How was wardrobe after rehearsal?” Will asked. “You guys are home earlier than normal. Is stuff starting to get done?”

“I think Carol was just fed up, honestly, and Weasel wanted to leave,” Crutchie said. “There’s still… _so_ much to do. Elaine and Sarah were working on some of the hand stuff I’ve been doing during rehearsal, but there’s still plenty of that, and now I have to iron everything. _Everything_. It all has to be ironed. Sarah helped me with that some after rehearsal, and Elaine did some of the buttons that still need to be done. There are so many buttons they want changed out. So. Many. Buttons.”

Will laughed and stood up. They heard him go into Elaine’s room, his voice a soft murmur through the thin wall.

“D’ya think you’ll get Saturday off?” Jack asked.

“I’m hoping to just have to go in for like, four to six hours,” Crutchie said. “I think that’s the best case scenario we can hope for. You?”

Jack shrugged. “The same, maybe. We might get it completely off, especially if nothing big comes up that we have to fix or make or deal with.”

“Lucky,” Crutchie groaned. He finished his food, set the bowl on the table, and sank back into the couch.

After a little while, Elaine and Will joined them in the living room. Will returned to his computer, and Elaine stopped off in the kitchen for a pouch of applesauce and a bottle of thick green juice. She curled up in the saucer chair, pulling a blanket slung over the back of it down to spread across her lap. Her eyes were red and puffy, and she sniffled regularly as she drank her juice.

“What is it with you and weird juices?” Jack teased gently.

Elaine shrugged. “Sometimes I don’t like to eat food. This stuff”—she shook the bottle she was holding—“seems a little more substantial and is easier to swallow than solid food.”

Jack shrugged. “To each their own.”

They sat in contented silence, punctuated only by Will’s typing and Elaine’s sniffles. “How was your first day of stop-and-go, Jack?” Elaine asked after a little while.

“It was fine,” Jack shrugged. “Utterly boring, and I’m still not really sure what’s going on, but it was okay.”

“That’s good. It looks like we’ll be on the same side of the stage for the show, so we’ll be seeing a lot of each other. Once we open, Albert and I will have to introduce you to our magnet game.”

“What is it with you and games?” Jack laughed. “Crutchie was telling me about the one you made up when you were running spots with Snipe or something? When was that?”

“Oh, yeah,” Elaine laughed, “‘Where’s Finch?’ I was on spot for the beginning of the last show because we were down a spot-op and I was still in Sarah’s role. Plus, I was having… issues with one of the other wardrobe ladies. Well, her and Carol both, to be honest. I was so excited to be on spot… but then Carla quit, and Weasel dragged me off spot because it’s easy to get a fill-in spot-op from the production company, but they don’t have a lot of dressers. And then they hired Sarah when they decided to give me Carla’s job and needed someone for mine. As for games… I came up with ‘Where’s Finch’, and there was another one we did while I was on spot, but I genuinely don’t remember who came up with the one Albert and I play. I think it might have been him, actually. We got Sarah in on it when she was swinging my track, too.”

“What does Sarah do for shows?” Crutchie asked. “I’m a little confused there, because Carol has been talking about how Sarah’s writing _her_ track, but that sounds like one of those topics to maybe not bring up with Carol unless you want a rant.”

“Yeah,” Elaine sighed. “See, Carol is threatened by Sarah—and me too—because we’re better at her job than she is. Like, sure, we don’t have the experience or even the sewing skills that she does, but we’re younger, and therefore faster, stronger, and just generally move better. She can’t get down on the floor to help with shoes or anything—and she won’t help with shoes no matter what, even if it doesn’t require her getting on her knees. She doesn’t move quickly, and she can’t carry as many baskets of clothes as we can. But they’re not going to fire her, and I don’t think they should anyways, because of her experience, and because she’s almost sixty-five and can retire whenever she wants—literally the only reason she hasn’t, according to her, is because she can’t get on Medicare yet—and she’s valuable for her sewing skills, because she really is good at that. 

“But she sucks to work with. Like, she doesn’t even like dressing, and has a hard time with it physically sometimes, but she still used to get mad when I would dress more shows than her, and she’s the same way with Sarah. And she refuses to teach us anything, or show us how to do stuff, but if we don’t know how to do something or do it wrong—or when I used to do stuff the way Carla showed me instead of Carol’s way, even though Carol would refuse to even show me her way in the beginning—she gets mad about that too. Technically, Sarah is only a swing dresser, not a full-time dresser, and I used to be too when I had her job. That means that she should learn both Carol’s track and mine, to be able to fill in if one of us couldn’t do a show for some reason. In the last show, he used to pull her off and have me run it instead so she could get a head start working on costumes for this show. For this show, Weasel decided that he was going to use _Carol_ as the swing dresser, and have me and Sarah be the primary dressers, because that way Carol can get a head start on costumes for Christmas, because we’re always running late on Christmas. You should have _heard_ the fit she threw when he suggested that. And it’s like she still hasn’t accepted it, because she keeps acting like she’s supposed to be the main dresser for stage left.”

She stopped abruptly. “Sorry, I can literally rant about Carol for _hours_ . I hate her—no, I don’t. I don’t hate _her_ . She can actually be a pretty nice person! I hate _working_ with her. I hope she retires after Christmas. She’ll be sixty-five in December, so she’ll be able to qualify for Medicare, and then maybe she’ll leave us all alone.”

Jack nodded, surprised by the rant. After a moment of thought, though, he realized that it wasn’t actually so surprising, given all Elaine had complained about Carol over the past few weeks.

”She really does kinda suck,” Crutchie yawned, sinking deeper into the couch cushions.

“She’s not nice!” Elaine said, sitting up in her chair. “Sorry, apparently I’m not done. But she’s not. She’s made me cry more than anyone else at the theatre, even Weasel. I didn’t used to think I cried easily, but this job has kind of changed my mind about that.”

Jack laughed. “What has Carol done to make you cry? She seems like a harmless old lady, even after all you’ve said. That just makes her sound petty.”

“Oh, yeah, you’d think!” Elaine rolled her eyes. “So, I’m pretty sure the first time she made me cry was during the last dress rehearsal for the last show. I had spent stop-and-go and all of the dress rehearsals up until that point writing the stage left dresser track, and I gave her a copy at Weasel’s request so she could start familiarizing herself with it. Well, she refused to even look at my copy, and instead printed out her own sheets to write her own. Which is fine, like, whatever, write your own. But at least look over mine so you have an idea of what’s going on. But if you don’t want to do that, whatever, it’s your own problem. Anyways, she comes down to the final— _final—_ dress rehearsal, saying that she’s going to shadow me for that _one_ rehearsal and then run the show for _opening night_ the next day, all without even reading the track I wrote _for her_.

“So, when you’re shadowing someone to learn their track, you’re supposed to be completely hands-off. Like, stand in a corner and watch, don’t touch anything unless it’s an absolute emergency. Well, literally the first change starts, and Carol immediately butts in and starts trying to do stuff. To the point of _pushing me out of the way_ to do things herself. Clearly making the performers uncomfortable. And then we walk out of the changing booth to run clothes back to the dressing rooms, and Weasel stops us and goes ‘Carol, you’re keeping hands-off, right? Not touching anything?’ And she looks him straight in the eye and goes ‘oh, of course! I wouldn’t want to get in the way!” or some bullshit like that, and walks away. So I told him she was lying, and went to keep doing my _fucking_ job, which I happen to be good at, despite what Carol continues to say. He pulled her aside and told her that she wasn’t supposed to touch anything again, and in the next change she _fucking does it again_. So I told him again, and he talked to her again, and she finally stopped interfering towards the end of the first act, but I was so mad about her straight-up lying while I was standing right there, like for some reason she thought I wouldn’t rat her out, and at her acting like I didn’t know what I was doing and everything. And that’s the one and only time in my life that I’ve literally been so angry at someone that I started crying. I won out in the end, though, because the performers told Spice about it and she got Carol banned from the entirety of backstage for the rest of the week.”

“Wow,” Jack said.

“Look, I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it kind of was,” Elaine said. “She continuously acts like I don’t know what I’m doing, and treats me like an idiot. The only people she’s really nice to are the performers.”

“I can attest to that,” Crutchie grumbled. Jack looked over at him, and Crutchie shrugged. “She’s not nice, except to the performers, because she likes them—or at least pretends to. Half of them, as soon as they’re gone she’s talking shit about them just like she does everyone else.”

“Oh, yeah, she badmouths literally _everyone_ ,” Elaine said. “At least, everyone on wardrobe and in management. Even the owners. The performers. At least half of the crew, although not so much the ones she doesn’t see much of. So anyone on stage left, or who’s been here long enough, would be the ones she talks about the most. Elmer gets a pass; she loves him. And Finch. Mostly Finch, actually. She used to talk absolute _shit_ about Carla, the other wardrobe lady, before she quit, as soon as Carla would walk out of the room. I’m sure she does it about me, too—actually, I know she does, because she said some stuff to Sarah before she realized me and Sarah were friends, but she didn’t say anything too bad to her. I’m assuming it was, like, the lite version. I’m sure she’s even somehow come up with bad stuff to say about Crutchie, but she’s smart enough not to say it to me, or probably Sarah.”

“You should be safe,” Crutchie teased, elbowing Jack in the ribs.

”Yeah, there’s a very real chance that Carol doesn’t even know you exist yet, and you should be happy if she doesn’t,” Elaine laughed.

.*.*.*.*.*.

The next day went much in the same way. Jack spent most of it slouched against the fly rail next to Race, until Weasel would come by in a flurry of pumping arms and tell them that it was time for the next scene change, at which point they’d all run around half in a frenzy, trying to figure out what was supposed to go where, and then taping it all out on the floor with neon-colored spike tape, all the while being hurried along by Weasel and a cranky-looking Spice, who seemed to only care about getting on with the rehearsal, rather than actually getting set to run the show.

Once again, Elaine and Sarah spent most of the day sitting on the carpet in the wagon house and hand-sewing, except for when Spice would request that they run a quick-change. As far as Jack could tell, that just meant that they’d run the last few lines of the scene or song, and then people would run offstage to the changing booths, and come back out a few minutes later in completely different costumes.

Elaine’s changing booth wasn’t strictly a booth so much as it was a whole room, which she and the crew boys on stage right referred to as the ‘hole’. When you stepped through the wagon house door to get into the stage right wing (as apparently the side of the stage was called), you could either go onto the stage—and, if you wanted to get into the house, down a few stairs between the stage and the wall—or walk the whole length of the wing, along the fly rail, and through a door. This door led down a few more stairs to a small room with a clothing rack, folding table, handful of chairs, and a wide mirror hung from the ceiling over the table. There were two sets of double doors, one on the right-hand wall that led outside and one on the left-hand wall that led to the house. In the wall straight ahead from the bottom of the stairs was a door that led into a small closet; this is where the ladder that Snipe called the “shortcut” to the catwalk was located—it was a narrow metal ladder surrounded by a cage that led straight up two stories to a platform used for storage of holiday decorations, followed by another identical ladder that went up another story to a small door that led straight to the catwalk.

One of the first things Jack learned about running a show on stage right was to keep the door to the hole clear at all times, even if no-one was currently in it. At any time, performers could run offstage for a change, or Elaine could come out to go to the dressing room, and it only took Jack being run into once to follow Race’s advice to just avoid the doorway at all times.

By the end of rehearsal, they still hadn’t reached the end of the show. A frustrated Spice released the performers, saying that they’d finish stop-and-go on Monday and to have a good weekend.

The crew was released even earlier than they had been the day before, and given the next day off. Jack went home to find Alan, Alden, and Will deliberating over dinner. Even Elaine and Crutchie were home early, while Jack and Alan were still making dinner, in the best moods they’d been in for weeks.

“We’re only in for four or five hours tomorrow, and our call’s not until ten,” Elaine beamed, practically bouncing with happiness. “I’m going to bed. I need to catch up on my sleep.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY, LET'S TAKE A BREAK FROM ME RANTING ABOUT EVERYTHING I BOTH HATE AND MISS ABOUT MY JOB AND HAVE SOME FLUFF. OKAY? OKAY. ELAINE AND CRUTCHIE ARE BESTIES AND YOU WILL NOT CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE.

The next morning, both Crutchie and Elaine slept until nine thirty, and rushed out the door, breakfast in hand, at nine forty-five. Somehow, they still managed to be clocked in just in time, Elaine at nine fifty-nine, and Crutchie at ten exactly.

Elaine sighed as she set her bag down next to her desk and nudged it further underneath with her foot. “I always miss Sarah on Saturdays.”

Crutchie smiled as he sat down. “Me too. Do you think Carol will have any of the other ladies in?”

“Hopefully not,” Elaine grumbled. “I don’t feel like dealing with them. Although, if they do come in, she’ll kick us out and we can just hang out in one of the dressing rooms…”

Crutchie laughed. He threaded his needle and got straight to work replacing the buttons on the coat he was working on with new ones selected by Spice.

Carol came into the sewing room over ten minutes late, scowling.

“Good morning, Carol,” Elaine called over her shoulder. No reply. She rolled her eyes at Crutchie and waited a few more minutes until Carol was settled. “Hey, Carol, do you know if Cheryl or any of the other ladies are coming in today?”

“No, why?” Carol asked.

“I was just curious,” Elaine said. “I didn’t want to get too wrapped up in anything in here if Crutchie and I were going to be asked to leave in a little while so they could use our machines.”

“We don’t make  _ you _ leave,” Carol said. “We’re not allowed to use your desk any more.”

“Just thought I’d ask,” Elaine sighed under her breath, then turned back to her work. “Hey, when we’re done, do you want to come to the store with me?” she asked Crutchie, eyes fixed on the new hem she was putting into a coat sleeve.

“I thought the others said they’d go to the grocery store this afternoon?” Crutchie said.

“Not the grocery store,” Elaine shook her head. “Maybe like Target or something? And I need to stop at Home Depot for some dirt.”

“Dirt?” Crutchie laughed.

“Yeah, some of my plants need to be repotted, and they could all use a fresh layer of soil.”

“You have plants?”

“Have you seriously not been in my room yet?” Elaine paused. “Yeah, I guess not. We’ve been too busy for much hanging out at home, I guess.”

“Pretty much,” Crutchie agreed. “Sure, I’ll come along.”

“Yay!” Elaine chirped. She pushed her glasses up on her head and focused in on her hem.

“What did you want at Target?” Crutchie asked, after a moment of silence.

“Well, I half just want to go there to be somewhere that isn’t work or home,” Elaine admitted with a laugh. “But, I also have a plan to… lift the mood back home.”

.*.*.*.*.*.

Several hours later, Elaine pulled into the parking lot down the street from their apartment. “Look,” Crutchie pointed.

“Hey! Boys!” Elaine opened her door and climbed half out of her car, waving her arm vigorously to get the attention of Alan, Alden, Will, and Jack as they entered the parking lot.

“Hey!” Will waved back.

“You guys haven’t even left yet?” Crutchie said, climbing out of the car.

“We were waiting until you got back in case you wanted to come,” Alan said.

“We do not,” Elaine said. “We ran our own errands and are now prepared to enjoy the rest of our weekend.”

“What she said,” Crutchie laughed.

“Fair enough,” Alden shrugged. “We’ll see you in a little while. Anything you want to add to your grocery lists?”

“I don’t have anything,” Elaine shrugged, glancing over her shoulder at Crutchie, who shook his head.

“Okay, well, text us if you think of anything,” Alan said, already heading towards Jack’s van.

“Hey, bring dinner back with you! Pizza!” Elaine called after him. “You can use my card to pay for it; I just want pizza!”

Once the boys had loaded into the van and pulled out of the parking lot, Elaine retrieved her bags from the backseat of her car.

“Do you want help with anything?” Crutchie asked, his own bags already held in his free hand.

“No, I’m good,” Elaine said, pushing the door shut with her knee. They trekked back to the apartment, lugging their bags along. They stopped a moment to chat with their landlady, propping the door to her yoga studio, below their apartment, open to let in the pleasant breeze, then squeezed through the narrow passage to get back to the rickety wooden stairs. Crutchie opened the door to let them in, Elaine right on his heels. She set down some of her bags to pull the screen door shut and lock it behind them before heading into the apartment. The windows in the living room, Elaine’s bedroom, and the boys’ room—as well as the kitchen—were open as well, sheer white curtains billowing in the breeze that floated through the apartment.

“JD?” Elaine called up from the bottom of the crawlspace ladder-steps.

There was a long pause, and then a distant “ _ What!? _ ”

Elaine rolled her eyes. “Just wanted to see if you were here!” She pushed open the door to her room, and Crutchie followed her in.

Elaine’s room was long but narrow. She had a twin bed pushed against the far wall to their left, under a pair of the tall windows that graced the boys’ room and the living room, these a little narrower and with less space between them. At the foot of her bed was a purple plastic chest. Under the bed was a pull-out daybed, turned sideways so that half of it was under the bed and half was along the wall across from them. Also set against the wall across from the door was a pair of white wooden cubby-shelves and a small kitchen table, upon which was set up a sewing machine and fabric cutting mat. Behind the door were a pair of closet doors—the only closet Crutchie had seen in the entire apartment, besides the small ones in the bathroom. Against the wall adjacent to the door were more shelves—a wooden bookshelf, a few plastic crates stacked on top of each other and stuffed with fabric and yarn, and a low three-tier shelf with a small TV on top of it. Overall, Elaine seemed to have maximized the limited and awkwardly-shaped space into a fairly cozy room and workshop for her crafts.

Crutchie looked around as he set his bag on the table next to the sewing machine. Like the wall in Alan’s room, the wall across from Elaine’s door was covered in show posters, photos, artwork, postcards from an assortment of places, movie tickets, and more. String lights with small, globular bulbs ran along the top of the wall; on top of the wooden bookshelf, he spotted a salt rock lamp, and a diffuser was perched on one of the white cubbies. He also noticed that one of the deep windowsills was stuffed full of small plants—mostly succulents and cacti—and the other was starting to reach the same point.

Elaine set her bags down on the bed, separating one from the others. She pulled a trio of small cacti, purchased that afternoon on their excursion, out of the bag and set them on the nearest flat surface. “Those can wait. Let’s decorate first.”

.*.*.*.*.*.

Over the next two hours, Elaine and Crutchie went more than a little crazy decorating the apartment.

In the entry hallway, they hung black, purple, and orange spider, witch hat, and pumpkin cutouts. Elaine climbed up on a chair and hung sparkly purple and orange garlands, sprinkled with pumpkin and bat confetti, up at the top of the walls through the entirety of both hallways. In the cross hallway that led to all of the rooms, they hung fake spiderwebs, complete with fuzzy toy spiders. On the door to the bathroom, they hung a ghost poster; an almost life-sized cutout zombie decorated the door to the boys’ room, and Elaine hung a purple skeleton from her door.

Crutchie took the kitchen to decorate. He taped cutout bats, spiders, and pumpkins on the cabinets. On the curtain rod, he wrapped orange twinkle lights, while a string of purple lights was tacked up over the archway of the entry. He covered the refrigerator in chunky plastic magnets shaped like skulls and eyeballs and witch hats and brooms. A collection of small, decorative, fake pumpkins were lined up along the wall on the breakfast counter, while a larger pumpkin—made of black velvet and decorated with sequined cat ears—found a home in the corner of the counter, next to the sink. The windowsill of the kitchen window wasn’t as deep as the ones in the bedrooms and living room, but he lined up seven Halloween-themed mugs on it anyways.

In the living room, Elaine spent most of the time hanging purple and orange fairy lights along the top of the walls. When Crutchie was done in the kitchen, he joined her to help, and even JD—when he came down from the crawlspace to use the bathroom and found out what they were doing—joined them for a little while. In the windows, she hung sparkly purple and black spiderweb lace, actually table runners just draped over the curtain rods. She had a pumpkin and bat-printed tablecloth for the big table, and a smaller pumpkin-shaped piece for the coffee table. On the windowsills, she set little stuffed cats, bats, and spiders in a neat line, their oversized sparkly eyes facing out into the living room. There were even a few Halloween throw pillows that found their way onto the couch and saucer chair as a finishing touch. Fake candles were added to the middle of the tables, and a fake plant that looked like black velvet orchids with bright green glass eyes in their centers was placed next to the TV.

Once they were done, Elaine and Crutchie returned to her room for the rest of the bags, which they took out onto the sunny porch. Elaine went back inside and returned with her windowsill plants, tucked neatly into a shallow tray for portability. It actually took her two trips to bring out all of the plants, during which time Crutchie took the doormat up from the porch, draped it over the railing, and replaced it with a new one in the shape of a cartoon ghost.

They settled down on the porch, Elaine sat cross-legged on the sun-heated boards, while Crutchie perched on a low wicker footstool. Elaine pulled a bag of soil labeled for cacti and citrus plants out of her Home Depot bag from earlier, and placed a sizable cardboard box full of assorted mugs, pots, bowls, teacups, and other assorted “plant homes” between them.

“Help yourself,” she said, waving a small shovel at the box.

Crutchie sorted through the box and pulled out a pair of matching small mugs—white with a green, blue, and pink pattern around their mouths—and a tin planter with a plastic liner.

Elaine put on a Halloween-themed Spotify playlist, and they sat in the sun, singing along to the Addam’s family theme song, the Monster Mash, and more as they played with their plants. Crutchie had a pair of little cacti—one tall and vaguely cucumber-shaped, one purple and consisting of several prickle-covered “paddles”—and a larger succulent that Elaine called an “ogre’s ears”—“See, they look like Shrek’s ears!”—to settle into the pots he chose. The cacti proved to be an issue, however, until Elaine handed him a heavy glove and folded piece of fabric to wrap around it so that he could grasp the cacti gently and slide them out of their pots. She showed him how to break up their root balls, knock off loose dirt, and settle them into pots already two-thirds full of fresh soil, then fill in the gaps around the edges with spoonfuls of more dirt. She spent the time hunched forward, gently tapping fresh soil onto the packed-down tops of several of her older plants, repotting a few others, and settling the new ones into fresh soil and pots.

Once his three plants were rehomed, Crutchie moved to one of the chairs on the porch and watched Elaine. “I’m not sure where I’m going to put these,” he said, looking over at his little trio of plants on the table next to him.

“Just tell Alan that you’re putting them either on one of the windowsills or on the top of his desk and you don’t care what he says about it,” Elaine shrugged. “Honestly, he probably won’t care. If he didn’t have such a black thumb, he’d have his own plants. But, unfortunately, he can kill a plant by looking at it, so he doesn’t keep any.”

“If he kills them by looking at them, do I really want to put mine on his desk?” Crutchie laughed.

Elaine laughed too. “Hey, remind me to give you my old watering can at some point. I have two, because I bought a new one after we moved here. And it’s not like I need two watering cans, but the new one is shaped like a duck, so I couldn’t  _ not _ buy it.”

Crutchie laughed and leaned back in his chair. The sun on his face was pleasant, and he soon closed his eyes, listening to the soft music coming from Elaine’s phone, the rustling sounds of her digging into the bag of soil, and the soft clinking of the spoon against the rims of the pots and cups of her plants.

“More importantly,” Elaine said after a while, “have you figured out what to name your plants?”

“ _ Name _ them?” Crutchie repeated. “I didn’t realize I had to do that.”

“I mean, you don’t technically  _ have _ to, but it’ll make them happier,” Elaine shrugged.

“‘Happier’?”

“Yeah, plants are happier when you talk to them and stuff. It’s scientifically proven. And naming them makes it easier to talk to them, at least in my experience.”

Crutchie laughed and looked over his plants. “Well, I’m definitely calling this one Shrek.” He held up the ogre ears. “Maybe I’ll call this one… Larry”–he pointed to the cucumber-shaped cactus–“and this one… I don’t know. I’ll think of something.”

“You should call it Napstablook,” Elaine laughed. “Something about it reminds me of that particular ghost.”

“...Napstablook?”

“Yeah! Best animated ghost in video game history!”

“What?” Crutchie laughed.

“Have you ever heard of Undertale?”

“No, what is it?”

“It’s a game. It’s, um… hard to explain. I’ll show you some videos later. But it’s a really good game, and Napstablook is one of my favorite characters. He’s a fairly depressed ghost who likes to listen to sad music, and his character design is adorable, and I love him.”

Crutchie laughed. “What kind of game is it?”

“It’s an 8-bit-style computer game—at least I think it’s something like that—and it’s about this kid who falls into the realm of monsters and has to find the way back home. And you meet lots of great characters. My favorites are Napstablook, and then Sans and Papyrus. They’re named after the Comic Sans and Papyrus fonts, and all of their dialogue is written in their respective fonts. They’re great. I love them. Maybe I’ll name some of my new plants after them…”

“Do all of your plants have names?”

“Um, yes… I don’t always remember them, but technically yes, they do. This is my favorite”—she held up a sad-looking aloe vera plant in a white mug, decorated with a donut and a donut hole standing side by side, with the caption “you complete me”—“and his name is Alphie. The other aloe is Alfonse…”

Elaine took her plants back inside when she was done—a three-trip process, between all of the plants, the bag of dirt, and the box of pots—then joined Crutchie back out on the deck. She changed the music on her phone to soft lofi and curled up in the other chair, basking in the sunshine.

.*.*.*.*.*.

The two were still outside when Alden and Will climbed the creaking stairs, laden with grocery bags.

“You guys are going to get sunburned,” Alden called out, opening the screen door to go inside.

Elaine opened her eyes and looked down at her arms. “I think it’s too late,” she groaned.

“Pasty bitch,” Alden teased.

“Is that new?” Will asked, looking down at the doormat.

Elaine and Crutchie traded grins as the boys entered the apartment. A few minutes later, Alden’s face appeared in the kitchen window above their heads, a huge grin plastered across it.

“ _ Elaine _ . This is  _ insane _ .”

“Do you like it?”

“Like it? It’s amazing. Alan’s going to lose it.”

“I know; I can’t wait.”

A few minutes later, Alan came tromping up the stairs, hands full of plastic bags.

“Hey, do you want some help?” Elaine asked.

“Nah, there’s only like two trips left,” Alan said. “We unloaded the van in the alley, and Jack went to go park it. Will and I can bring the rest up.”

He opened the door and went into the apartment, then immediately came back out. “What the fuck.”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s… well, it’s sure something,” Alan stammered, looking back over his shoulder at the hallway. “I don’t… does it  _ all _ have to stay up?”

“Yes,” Elaine laughed.

Alan went back inside, letting the screen door slam shut behind him.

Elaine looked at Crutchie. “That went over well.”

“I’m looking forward to seeing Jack’s reaction,” Crutchie laughed.

“Does he not like Halloween?”

“No, not that, I just don’t know how he’ll react to how… over the top it all is.”

“Valid,” Elaine nodded.

Alan and Will came back out—Alan frowning slightly, Will laughing openly—and went back down the stairs, then came up with the rest of the groceries. When they went back inside, Crutchie and Elaine could hear them and Alden talking in the kitchen.

“Oh, hey!” Elaine popped up and climbed up to stand on her chair so she could see through the window into the kitchen. “Did you guys get pizza? Cos if not, I would definitely be open to ordering some. I just really want pizza.”

“We ordered from Marino’s on our way back, and Jack’s going to pick it up on his way back from parking the van,” Alden called.

“Yay!” Elaine cheered, plopping back down in her chair.

It wasn’t much longer before they heard Jack climbing the noisy wooden stairs. Elaine hopped up and hurried over to the door. “Do you need a hand with anything, Jack?” she called down the steps.

“I’m fine,” he responded, his head appearing over the railing as he climbed the last few steps.

Elaine opened the door so Jack could enter the house, then went back to the metal table to pick up two of Crutchie’s plants. They came up to the screen door just in time to hear a vague screech from inside the house. Inside, they nearly ran into Jack as he stormed out of the kitchen. “What is all of this?” Jack asked, half incredulous.

“Halloween!” Elaine grinned, raising one of the mug-planted cacti in her hands like she was toasting with it.

“More like ‘Jack Skellington puked Halloweentown all over our apartment’,” Alden laughed.

Jack shook his head, laughing despite himself. “Did you two seriously do all this on your own while we were gone?”

“JD helped a little with the living room,” Elaine said, “but yeah, it was mostly just us.”

“I mean… that’s actually kind of impressive,” Jack admitted.

“Thank you!” Elaine beamed.

“Hey, Alan, where will these be the most out of the way on the windowsills?” Crutchie asked, holding up the plant in his hand and using it to gesture to the ones Elaine was carrying.

“Wherever,” Alan shrugged. “Wait, are those yours? I assumed they were Lainey’s.”

“I mean… I got some too,” Elaine admitted.

“Elaine! Stop buying plants! You don’t have anywhere to put them!” Alden laughed.

“There’s still room on one of my windowsills!” Elaine protested.

“You have too many plants!” Will argued.

“Shhh,” Elaine ducked back into the hallway, heading for the boys’ room with Crutchie’s plants. They set the three little pots up on one of the windowsills, the succulent situated in the middle of the cacti. “Now, you just have to keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t burn. They shouldn’t; mine never have, but if they do you can just put the curtain behind them or move them to somewhere else in the room—not that y’all really have much space in here—so the light isn’t so harsh on them.”

“JD! Come eat dinner!” They heard Will call from the other side of the apartment.

“Ey, Crutch! Laine! Let’s go!” Jack appeared in the doorway. “Food’s ready, and I’m starved.”


	8. Chapter 8

After the quiet bliss of the weekend, they were all reluctant to go back to work on Monday. Nevertheless, they did; Monday morning dragged itself along like a snail, but once stop-and-go finished just before lunchtime, rehearsals began to pick up speed. They ran through the show twice that afternoon, each performance going more quickly and smoothly than the last. Tuesday was more dress rehearsals, one in the morning and two after lunch. Wednesday saw four total, one and the first half of another before lunch and the other two and a half after.

After the last rehearsal on Wednesday, Spice called the whole cast and crew to the stage.

“Wow, you guys!” Spice stood at the very front of the stage, beaming, her attention fully focused on the performers grouped on the stage in front of her. Weisel stood beside her, looking significantly less happy. “Everyone should be very proud of this show. You guys all look great out there, and I think that we’re going to have a great opening tomorrow!”

She went on for a little while longer, showering the cast with praise, and even sparing a few kind words for the crew. Once she was done, she dismissed the cast, and Weisel stepped forward to speak to the crew.

“Okay, everyone, we’re almost done with the build—but don’t forget: even once build is over, it’s not time to take a break. We still have the whole show to run. We don’t get to take it easy. It’s not the time to slack off.”

He went on for a while, discussing all the little things that they had to do before they left for the day, and then finally dismissed them. As usual, Crutchie, Elaine, and Sarah vanished back upstairs, dragging a clothing rack with a z-shaped bottom onto the elevator, laden with all of the costumes that still needed to be worked on for the night. Today, even Carol was with them, having spent the day shadowing Sarah to learn her track in order to run it on Saturday. The rest of the crew scattered, off to do their respective casts.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jack noticed a harried-looking Davey enter the wagon house. He turned to wave to the other boy, and Davey waved back, sparing him a tired smile, before meeting Les with a high five and leaving with the boy.

While there was a fair amount left to do to get ready for the opening show the next day, there was nothing major to do, and Weisel released the crew by eight PM. Out in the parking lot, Jack joined Race and Albert leaning against Race’s car.

“You need a ride home, Jackie?” Race asked, lighting up a cigarette.

Jack shrugged. “I don’t need one, but if you’re heading my way I wouldn’t mind a lift.”

Albert laughed. “I’m heading your way. I’ll give you a lift.”

“Thanks,” Jack said.

“Oh, hey, Jack! Don’t forget to wear your blacks for the show tomorrow,” Race called after them as they headed for Albert’s car.

“My  _ what _ ?” Jack asked.

“Your uniform,” Albert said. “Weisel should’ve given them to you around when you started. You should have two short and two long-sleeved polos, and two pairs of pants and two pairs of shorts. We’re supposed to wear the long sleeves and pants to run shows. And wear your steel-toes. And dark socks, because if Weisel sees your socks onstage he’ll flip his lid.”

“Seriously?” Jack asked.

“Yeah, the guy who had your job before you once wore bright blue socks for a show and during one of the blackouts the black light hit them and made them practically glow onstage. It was pretty funny—just not to Weisel. Of course, he was also really tall, so his pants were a little short and you could see his ankles…”

Jack laughed and shook his head.

“If you have other black pants, you can get away with those, too,” Albert continued. “They don’t care  _ that _ much. Well, maybe start out with the uniform ones. In a few days, they’ll care a lot less, but the opening weekend has to be  _ perfect _ .”

“Well, thanks for the heads up,” Jack sighed. “I probably wouldn’t have thought of it and wound up showing up in my paint clothes or something.”

“Nah, Elaine wouldn’t have let you get out the door in them,” Albert laughed. “The boys either.”

Jack laughed as they pulled up in front of the yoga studio. “Hey, thanks for the lift.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Albert said.

“See you tomorrow,” Jack leaned back into the car after he climbed out.

Albert stuck out a hand for a high five. “See you tomorrow. Happy opening!”

Jack shut the door and turned around, coming face-to-face with their little old landlady. “Hi there, ma’am.”

“Hello, Jack,” she smiled up at him. “How’s your play coming?”

“We open tomorrow,” Jack said. “You comin’ to see it?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” the woman beamed. “The World puts on such good shows.”

“Well, from what I can tell, this is certainly one of them. If you come see it, be sure and let us know what you think.”

“Of course, dear!”

.*.*.*.*.*.

The next morning, Jack, Crutchie, and Elaine all drove over to the theatre together, all dressed in long-sleeved black polo shirts with the World’s logo on the left side of the chest, in light blue and teal. Crutchie and Jack were wearing their long black cargo pants—Crutchie’s had been too long, they discovered that morning, but Elaine had swooped in with a handful of safety pins, promising to help him hem them when they got home—and steel-toed shoes, while Elaine wore a pair of her usual black workout leggings and dark grey sneakers. “They don’t give the girls uniform pants because they only order from the men’s line—so we have men’s polos, too, not that I’m really complaining about that—so we have to buy our own, but they don’t really care what we wear so long as it’s black. We also don’t get a shoe allowance like y’all get for your steel-toes.”

“Will Carol be downstairs again today?” Jack asked.

“I doubt it,” Elaine said. “They don’t like too many extra people hanging around for opening. She might be down tomorrow, though, since she’s running for Sarah on Saturday.”

In the wagon house, they found Weisel and most of the crew already arrived and clocked in.

“Crutchie, help Snipe with the confetti blowers, and then you can help out wardrobe,” Weisel called after them as they entered the stairwell.

“Yes, sir,” Crutchie called back.

The beginning of pre-show was a whirl as they got all of the set pieces into place, checked over props, and got ready for sound check. Elmer, Finch, and Henry got all of the microphones ready and laid out for the performers, Crutchie and Snipe filled the confetti blowers on the catwalk, and the rest of the crew tripped over each other to do the handful of tasks backstage.

“You know your track, Jackie?” Race grinned at Jack as they set the flies on the fly rail for the start of the show.

“Sure,” Jack laughed. “But, just in case I don’t, I have it all written down here.” He pulled a small notebook out of his back pocket and shook it at Race.

“Nice!” Albert said, bustling along behind them, arms full. “He’s already learned all the tricks, Race. We have nothing more to teach him.”

“Our little boy is all grown up,” Race sniffed, wiping a fake tear from the corner of his eye.

“Oh, shut up,” Jack laughed, aiming a lighthearted swat at Race—who easily dodged it.

By the time the performers arrived, two hours after them, the crew was finished with their tasks and milling around the wagon house. Albert collected a few of them to go outside to the loading dock to play hacky sack, which was a dismal failure—they couldn’t seem to keep it in the air for more than a few passes, with the exception of Finch and Elmer, both of whom were very good at passing it to each other and keeping it in the air on their own. Otherwise, Snipe kept kicking anyone standing near him, JoJo kept tripping over his own feet, and Henry consistently smacked the foot bag directly into the ground with his bare hand instead of passing it to anyone else.

After a little while, Elaine, Sarah, and Crutchie came outside to the little landing of the stairwell to watch. Elaine climbed up the safety railing and perched herself precariously on it, while Crutchie leaned against it next to her, and Sarah came down to join the boys. Race left the game to join Elaine and Crutchie on the landing and smoke a cigarette. With the soft breeze blowing, the weather was perfect.

The performers arrived in small groups, several of the youngest dropped off in batches by parents, while the older, non-local performers walked over from the cast housing behind the theatre. Davey and Les were the last to arrive, the latter sprinting into the building with his bag. Davey jogged along behind his little brother, but joined the crew outside in the hacky sack circle instead of going into the building. He slung an arm over Sarah’s shoulders and kissed her on the cheek, then was promptly hit in the face by the hacky sack.

“Sorry!” Henry winced, but he was almost completely drowned out by Race, Albert, Elaine, and Elmer all yelling:

“Get it!”—“didn’t hit the ground”—“faces aren’t hands it’s still in!”—“Davey, use your  _ foot _ not your  _ face _ !”

Davey wasn’t able to punt the hacky sack with his foot, but Finch slid in to save it, nearly managing to get himself into a full split with the dive. The bag didn’t make it to the other side of the circle, so Albert was the next to dive for it, managing to get his elbow under it and send it flying haphazardly towards the wall. Over the next few seconds, they all continued to dive frantically for the sack, getting increasingly elated as more and more people touched it. On the landing, Race and Elaine were chanting “full hack, full hack, full hack,” over and over, getting louder and louder with each new person who managed to pass the foot bag. Elaine actually started to bounce a little with excitement from her perch on the railing, and Crutchie reached out to grab her arm, worried she might fall.

Jack was the last one to land a touch on the sack, and managed to kick it hard enough to send it flying towards Race over on the stairs. A resounding cheer went up as he made contact, but some of them weren’t satisfied yet..

“Crutchie! You’re next; no hands!” Race got himself under the flying bag of beans and bounced it gently off his head.

Crutchie managed to catch the edge of the bag with his elbow, but sent it flying forward, over the railing and back towards the group in the loading dock. As it flew past her, Elaine managed to stick her foot out just in time and bounce it up, to another, even louder, cheer. It landed directly in the middle of the circle, everyone too busy chanting “ _ full hack _ ”, cheering, and laughing.

“Nice, Jack!” Elmer laughed, high-fiving him.

“Yeah, we almost never get a full hack in, especially not with this many people here,” Finch grinned.

“Way to go, Davey; you must be our good luck charm!” Albert laughed as he slung his arm over Davey’s shoulder, ruffling the taller boy’s dark hair.

“Come on, guys, let’s get back inside,” Race called, putting out his cigarette and tossing it over the railing.

“Seriously? You can’t even make it into the butt-catcher  _ right there _ ?” Elaine rolled her eyes.

“Oh, go sew something,” Race retorted, holding the door open for her to go inside.

“Oh, but you forget, Racer, that I can’t sew!” Elaine shot back, skipping away to check on the performers swarming around the dressing rooms.

“I thought Elaine could sew?” Jack murmured to Crutchie. “Didn’t she just promise to hem your pants this morning?”

“She can sew, just not as far as Carol’s concerned,” Crutchie whispered. “Or Weisel, or pretty much anyone else. They don’t like her doing much more than buttons and hems, if that.”

“Got it,” Jack nodded.

“Hey, Jack!” Davey called.

“Hey, Davey.”

“How’s it going? You ready to open?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Hey, at least  _ pretend  _ to be excited,” Finch said.

“You only get one first opening!” Race rolled his eyes.

“Wait, is this your first show, like,  _ ever _ ?” Davey asked.

“Yeah, I’ve never really done…  _ theatre _ before.”

“Hey, that’s cool!” Davey grinned. “Well, happy opening to you!”

“Thanks,” Jack laughed. “Are you watching the show?”

“Yeah, I’m going to watch it with Darcy, Bill, and Katherine today, and tomorrow with our parents,” Davey said. “Our parents can’t make it except for tomorrow, and Sarah will be working most of the shows, so I want to support Les as much as I can, and he loves it when we come to the shows. I’m skipping class to be here today, but it’s worth it if it makes him happy.”

“He seems like a good kid,” Jack grinned, glancing over at where Les was bouncing around as Elaine tried to fix something on the coat he was wearing.

“He’s great,” Davey laughed. “When we got him, Sarah and I weren’t too crazy about it, but as soon as we met him, we fell in love.”

“That’s great,” Jack laughed.

There was a moment of silence before Davey spoke again: “I should explain. Les is adopted. We didn’t just, like, kidnap him or anything. Sarah and I say that we ‘got’ him a lot, but that throws a lot of people off.”

Jack laughed again and shook his head. “I honestly didn’t even notice. I was just thinking that it’s great that you all have each other, and that Les has you and Sarah to look up to.”

Davey smiled. “Yeah, we love him.”

“Hey, Jack!” Race called, waving at him from the fly rail. “Come and give me a hand with this!”

“See you later, Davey. Enjoy the show!” Jack called over his shoulder.

“You too!”

.*.*.*.*.*.

The show flew by faster than Jack thought possible. He spent most of it feeling like he didn’t know what he was doing, despite the list on the little notebook in his pocket—which he didn’t have time to check anyways. If it weren’t for the occasional gentle reminder from Race or Albert, he wasn’t entirely sure he would’ve made it through the whole show without incident. As it was, he nearly tripped over Elaine three times, ran into Mike once, and nearly lowered the wrong fly twice. Nevertheless, before he knew what was happening, the cast was out for their bows and Albert and Henry were closing the curtains over the stage, and the whole audience was applauding—as were most of the people backstage.

“Way to go, Jack!” Elaine appeared at his elbow, beaming hugely and bearing three wash baskets stuffed with costumes from her last quick change.

“Here, let me help you,” Jack laughed, taking the top two baskets as the whole stack started to slip from her hands.

“Thanks,” Elaine grinned. “I can manage them just fine, until I stop moving. Then they start falling.”

Jack followed her back into the wagon house, which was oddly empty, except for Mike and Ike, who were carrying armfuls of props from one side of the stage to the other. “Where is everyone?”

“Oh, didn’t anyone tell you? The cast goes out to shake hands and sign autographs after the show.”

“Good to know.”

“I’ve got all the laundry from the men so far loaded into the washers,” Sarah called out, jogging past them.

“Awesome,” Elaine called after her. “Do we have vodka down here?”

“Yeah, I had Crutchie bring some down earlier on his way up to the catwalk.”

“Great; I totally forgot about it!”

“Do you want me to fill you a spray bottle?”

“Yes please!”

“Vodka?” Jack asked, following Elaine into the dressing room.

“Yeah, the alcohol kills bacteria, so we spray stuff we can’t wash with a vodka-water mix after each show to help keep it from smelling,” Elaine set her basket down on a chair and indicated for Jack to set his down. “Thanks for that. You should probably go do your post-show.”

.*.*.*.*.*.

Once they had finished their post-show duties—mostly things to reset props and set pieces for the next show—Race and Jack checked the sheet Weisel had hung on the wagon house cork board to check what their chores were. “They have us do the cleaning on show days so it’s a little easier on wardrobe,” Race explained. “Otherwise, the girls would be doing their post-show, laundry, and cleaning the whole place all by themselves. They still end up doing a lot of the cleaning, but at least we help a little.”

After he was done with his chores, Jack found himself back in the wagon house with the rest of the crew, including Buttons, Elmer, Snipe, and Crutchie. “No notes today, guys; you can go!” Weisel informed them before bustling off, nearly running down Elaine and Sarah as he entered the stairwell.

“Are you guys done, too?” Crutchie asked.

“No, we have to wait for the laundry,” Elaine sighed, putting her spray bottle of vodka in the laundry cabinet. “But if you guys don’t mind hanging around another twenty or thirty minutes or so, I’ll drive you home.”

.*.*.*.*.*.

The next day was more of the same, except later in the day. Jack was thrilled to have the whole morning to himself; he, and most of the others in the apartment, slept in—except for Alden and JD, who had morning classes. The show wasn’t until three in the afternoon, rather than the ten thirty AM like the day before, so they didn’t have to be at the theatre until noon. The morning was relaxing—after sleeping in, they had a quiet pancake breakfast together, then scattered around the apartment, each of them doing their own thing. Jack found himself out on the porch, relaxing in the sunshine, as he couldn’t think of anything else to do with his free time. At eleven, they had a small lunch before heading to the theatre; Elaine driving as usual, as Jack’s van was much more of a hassle to get out of the parking lot.

The show ran much more smoothly than the first, at least for Jack. On the other side of the stage, he caught a few glimpses of Carol on the heels of a frustrated-looking Sarah around, in preparation to run the show for her the next day. After this show, however, Weisel rushed them through their post-show, and then had them set up tables on the stage.

“We usually do this after the first Saturday of the run,” Race explained as he and Jack lugged a long, heavy folding table out onto the stage. “It’s a champagne reception. Katherine’s father comes out to make a speech and everything.”

Caterers brought in food—finger sandwiches, chicken tenders, cold shrimp, and other similar dishes, plus a wide variety of small, simple desserts. And, of course, there was a third, smaller table full of glasses of champagne and sparkling cider. The cast took up most of the stage, spread across the widest part of it, along with Spice, Katherine and her father, Bill, Darcy, and a few other people. The band formed a small group towards the set in the back of the stage, where their instruments were still set up. The crew made up a larger clump, in front of Finch’s sound board on stage left. Noticeably missing from any of the groups was Carol, but Davey joined the crew, his parents busy cooing over Les.

“Here you go, boys,” Weisel said, handing out glasses of champagne. He stopped halfway through handing one to Crutchie. “Are you legal?”

“I’m nearly twenty-three,” Crutchie replied.

“Just wanted to check,” Weisel said. “Elaine, you’re legal, right?”

“Well, I was for the last show,” Elaine said drily. “But I’m just going to grab some cider. I’m not a fan of champagne.”

Weisel handed her a glass of cider, and left them to join Spice and the Plummers.

Jack didn’t pay much attention to the speeches. Instead, he listened to the sarcastic comments Race and Albert were whispering to each other behind him. Finch yawned and rested an arm on Elaine’s shoulder, leaning against her. Crutchie shifted his weight to stand more comfortably. Beside him, Davey made a soft noise in response to whatever Plummer was saying and crossed his arms; now, his elbow was brushing Jack’s, a fact that the latter was acutely aware of.

Plummer finished his speech and everyone applauded. They raised their glasses in a cheer, then turned to each other and clinked them together, laughing and chattering.

“To Jack’s first opening!” Elaine smiled up at him.

Jack grinned back and tapped the edge of his glass against hers. He looked around the little knot of crew (plus Davey) and smiled again. Silently, he raised his glass again to this little family and took a sip of champagne.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don’t own Newsies or any of the characters you may recognize from it, but I do own this story, Elaine, Alden, Alan, etc. Cross-posting to ChocolatteKitty-Kat on AO3 and @maliciousbubbl3s on Tumblr.


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